Jikkendai
by Marie9
Summary: Nine months after the simultaneous disappearances of Heiji, Shinichi and Saguru, FBI agent Jodie Starling and others begin to tug at the strings leading to the reasons behind the vanishing act while Kaito finds family that he never knew he had.
1. Chapter 1

Rampant plot bunny that WOULD NOT GO AWAY. OMGPLOTBUNNIES. Enjoy! R&R , and speculation is always welcome! ;)

* * *

PROLOGUE: Nine Months Ago

* * *

_I found out._

Never had three little words hurt so much or carried so much weight, Hattori Heizo quickly decided. Three little words, turned into an atom bomb that had destroyed a family.

He let out a quick, tight sigh as he surveyed his son's now completely barren room, holding the single piece of paper that had been carefully written by that son and left on the dead center of the floor, the lone object that he had left behind. But Heiji's handwriting was _never _that neat...Heizo finally peeled his eyes off the paper (despite the neatness, it had to be Heiji- Heizo somehow just knew) and let his eyes aimlessly wander the shell of the room that had belonged to his son, until tonight.

Heizo had returned home from a visit to a crime scene to find that both the contents of the room and his son had completely vanished. Blank walls except for small little pockmarks left by posters, a blank tan, carpeted floor except for the indents where furniture used to be, an empty closet but for a few hangers...like his son had been erased, wiped out and whitewashed from his own past...his own life.

An atom bomb, that he should have seen coming. Should have prevented! _Could _have prevented, which was the part that was really eating him alive right now.

There was only one thing to which his son could have possibly been referring- especially considering the reaction it had caused- and the implications were definitely less than good. There was also the fact that he had been able to clear out his room so totally in such a short span of time- Heizo had only been gone for 2 hours! It seemed to indicate that Heiji had been planning this move for a while. _With the help of others, _Heizo added as a grim image came into his mind. _Could it...could it possibly be-? _

He shook his head furiously, not even allowing the dark alley his mind had been going down to fully form. _There's no way...but they _do _have contacts everywhere..._His eyes narrowed as he pondered the situation more. He wanted it to be a kidnapping so badly...but his well-developed policeman's instinct told him that his son had left on his own accord. With help from at least two or three unknown people. A terrible, ominous feeling slowly began developing in his gut, an almost primeval foreboding that Heizo had learned to pay strict attention to during his years on the streets before he had begun his climb up the administrative ladder.

He should have listened to Shizuka all those years ago, he decided with a grimace as the woman who was the subject of his thoughts entered the room.

"H-H-Heiji's room is-!" she cried as she entered the totally stripped room, unable to finish the sentence while her brain was processing the sheer shock of thier son's sudden and total uprooting, the bare floors and walls, the room that had suddenly become completely devoid of life. Turning to her husband with eyes full of tears after a few minutes of stunned silence, she managed to get out "D-did he-?"

"I'm afraid so," he said simply, preempting the rest of the question by showing her the carefully written piece of paper their son had left behind. What else could he say? Words could not possibly begin to make up for what had happened here, and he knew the blame lay entirely on him- and what really hurt him the most was that his wife knew that he knew that. As Shizuka stared at the paper, Heizo could only find the courage to offer a gentle hand on her shoulder as her son's handwriting became slowly blurred by her tears.

* * *

_How long is it going to take for the plane? Even for a snow delay from London, this is well over two hours, _thought Minawa Shiori irritatedly. She was tired, cold, hungry, and had decided an hour ago that this airport chair was the single most uncomfortable thing that she had ever had the displeasure of sitting in. _And it isn't like Saguru-botchama to not call when the plane is delayed, _a frown crossing her aged face as the chair began digging unmercifully into her back.

Allowing herself a small 'hmph' of displeasure, Shiori adjusted her position yet again before hearing that the flight from London that Hakuba Saguru was due on was _finally _landing. "I'll give him a piece of my mind for not telling me he'd be late," she muttered to herself, the angry tone tempered more than slightly with both age and affection for the teenage boy she had known and worked for since his youth.

She approached the arrival gate at a slow but steady pace, ready to greet Saguru when he emerged. _He sticks out like a sore thumb here in Japan, not that he doesn't already know that, _she thought with a wry grin that was half amusement, half sadness. He stood at least half a head taller than the average adult Japanese male, after all, and both his hair and eye color were unique and marked his half-British heritage.

So when the plane had completely finished disembarking and she still hadn't seen that head of perfectly kempt blonde hair poking out above all the others, she became worried. Her anxiety increased after she realized that baggage collection had completed and there was no baggage left- which meant Saguru hadn't slipped past her field of vision at some point; he hadn't had any luggage on the plane at all.

"Excuse me, are you Minwa Shiori-san?" inquired a soft female voice from behind her shoulder. A slightly plump, black-haired woman stood behind her, a pleasant expression on her face. "A young man named Hakuba Saguru said to give this to you, and he also said to apologize if the plane ran late." The woman placed a folded note in Shiori's hand and then walked off down the terminal, disappearing into the crowd quickly. _What is this? _Shiori wondered, taking in the small, folded note for a few moments before opening it.

_Thank you for everything, Shiori. I most likely won't be seeing you again. _

This was...what was this? Shiori blinked twice, still not quite comprehending what was going on here, taking in Saguru's trademark orderly handwriting in a state of shock. He wasn't late, he was just...gone? But _why_? The new school year was due to start tomorrow! Had he transferred to another school, or-?

"I see."

"You see? That's all you can say?" she demanded as soon as she had gotten Saguru's father on the phone a few moments later. "Your son has_ vanished! _He never made that connecting flight. And he...he left me a note." What was this, tears threatening to fall at the edges of her cheeks?

"A note?"

"Yes, a note! And he says that he..." a brief intake of breath to control the screaming at her employer that she knew she would otherwise be doing. "that he most likely won't be seeing me again."

"Then come home."

"But we need to-!"

"Come home." His tone suddenly became dangerous, and Shiori knew that it would be unwise to argue any further. This was _his son _and the only thing that the man could muster after receiving the news was to tell her to come home? But-but...

"I know why he left," he stated simply, causing Shiori's head to spin. "He probably won't be coming back, exactly as he says."

* * *

"Hey, Kudo. Got a minute?"

Hattori Heiji's tone was most decidedly not the relaxed, carefree one that Kudo Shinichi had come to know over the course of his friendship with the Osakan. He sounded nervous, uptight, and above all, _angry. _Not to mention that he was calling in the middle of the night...

"Yeah, What's up, Hattori?" He was still half-asleep, but waking up rapidly, the strange events causing his curious side to quickly awaken. _Heiji doesn't sound like his normal self at all..._

"Nothing good." A brief, very uncomfortable pause. "Feel like coming over? I'm staying at the hotel that's two blocks from your house, the one with the cat in its logo. Room 2212." Another awkward silence. "There's some stuff I'd rather not talk about on the telephone, but you'll want to hear it."

Shinichi quickly got dressed, his curiosity fully piqued. He quietly slipped out of the Mouri residence, being careful to lock the door behind him and also being careful to not only have his cellphone on him and fully charged, but his super shoes and inflatable soccer ball as well. He didn't think that Heiji would lead him into a trap, but people were capable of amazing things once a gun was pointed at their head and he placed nothing beyond the capability or ruthlessness of the Black Organization, including turning his fellow tantei and best friend into a trap.

Shinichi approached Room 2212 after making an inquiry at the front desk with a vague sense of unease and his sneakers fully charged. He cautiously approached and lightly rapped on the door, then heard the snicks and clacks of chains and locks being undone. "Hey, Kudo. Thanks for coming," stated Heiji flatly once he opened the door, body language full of a strange mixture of unease and anger. "C'mon in."

"Are you alright, Heiji?" Shinichi asked simply. He wasn't one to use first names much, but things seemed so strange right now...

"Not really." He closed and relocked the door, then waved his hand at a slightly plump, black-haired woman who wore a gentle smile, her purse laying next to where she was sitting on the bed. "This is Saiyano Yukina. Hakuba introduced me to her a couple of months ago. You might want to hear what she has to say."

As she spoke- for over an hour - Shinichi felt his entire world start to crumble around him.

By the time that she was finished, Shinichi lay slumped against the bed, completely disbelieving...but she'd had evidence...so much evidence...Undeniable, absolute evidence. There he sat for nearly ten minutes, still trying to process it all and trying to pick up the pieces.

"I felt about the same when I first heard it, too," stated Heiji, sympathizing with the shell shock that his friend was going through. "First I was shocked, then I got-"

Shinichi turned to him, blue eyes so filled with hatred and anger that all Heiji could do was nod and say "Yeah."

"Now that you know, would you like to do something about it?" inquired Yukina, a sly smile playing across her face. "I have a proposal for you that your friend Hattori here and Hakuba Saguru have both already accepted."

"What?"

* * *

After another hour, Shinichi and Heiji followed Yukina out to the long, white limousine that awaited to escort them to the airport. Shinichi had only asked for time to go back and get a few outfits, and to leave Ran a long note; Yukina had readily agreed to both conditions.

_I'm sorry, Ran. I'll keep in touch, but this is something I _need _to do,_ thought Shinichi sadly as he watched the Mouri Detective Agency disappear into the darkness for what would very likely be the last time.


	2. Chapter 2

Thanks to those who are reviewing, faving and alerting!

* * *

_You'll know him when you see him? _FBI field agent Jodie Starling, sometimes known as Jodie Santemillion, tried to protest that this bit of advice offered quickly and quietly was not nearly enough to go on, but she was cut off, the sound of the phone clicking in her ear terminating the hastily placed call as she waited in the airport for the flight carrying her CIA contact to arrive. All that she knew was that it was a male. Not even a rough age had been provided, much less any kind of physical description of the person she was supposed to meet with, which irritated her more than slightly. What the hell was the CIA thinking? This was no way to run a meeting with a contact! She slammed her cellphone shut with a disgusted huff accompanying the gesture, face a mask of total annoyance.

She was half-tempted to call Hondou Hidemi right back and demand at least _some _sort of physical description, but knew that as she was currently hiding within the Black Organization as a double agent, such a call would most likely result in Hidemi's immediate death. _Even if she was responsible for Shuichi getting killed, I don't want her blood on my hands, _she mused grimly. Besides, she had to give Hidemi the fact that she had been either brave enough or feeling enough guilt after shooting him to call Jodie at the first opportunity she had been able to get time alone, telling Jodie exactly what had happened before, during and after she had left Shuichi's charred corpse and car behind on that lonely stretch of road. The phrase 'Don't think badly of me' still haunted Jodie some nights...

'Attention, please. Attention, please,' crackled a well-worn, efficient-sounding and firm female voice through the airport's intercom system. The loud buzzing noise before the announcement had started rose above the din of the crowd, quickly snapping Jodie out of her reverie and refocusing her on the meeting at hand. 'Flight 885 inbound from New York City has arrived at Gate 5, Concourse C.' _That's the one. Now to figure out where in this place I am... _'Repeat, Flight 885 inbound from New York City has arrived at Gate 5, Concourse C.' The announcement was repeated twice more, translated into English.

"Yeah, yeah. I hear ya," she muttered to no one in particular, aiming the remark upwards in the general direction of the PA system. "Who decided to make airports so huge, anyhow?" With an irritated sigh, Jodie began to try and track down an airport guide or map of some form to at least get herself pointed in the correct general direction within the maze-like airport. _And I thought O'Hare International was bad..._She had meant to arrive at least an hour earlier, but she had forgotten how utterly horrific Monday morning traffic could be around an airport, and she had also become forcibly engaged in a pursuit of a parking spot that had wound up taking her the better part of thirty minutes to complete. _This better be worth all this hassle and time...but since Hidemi risked the contact outside of our normal routine and also risked the calls to set up this appointment, it _must_ be..._

Jodie had actually been suspicious of the contact at first, thinking it was perhaps a trap Hidemi had been forced to participate in; the undercover CIA agent had called her quite literally out of the blue at two A.M. the previous Wednesday, having interrupted the first decent night's sleep Jodie had been able to get (well, had _tried _to get) in over a week. Of course, Hidemi had never been under any sort of obligation to call her, but the pair had somehow fallen by unspoken mutual agreement into a semi-steady routine of phone calls at five P.M. Tokyo time on the second Saturday of every month, Hidemi delivering what news she could of the Black Organization's doings that she could manage in the ten-minute span of freedom that she had to deliver it in. She had never explained why she had begun the regular contact- the CIA was under no sort of obligation to report anything to the FBI, and the infighting amongst the two agencies was legendary- but Jodie suspected that it was her way of trying to make up for Shuichi's death in the only way she ever possibly could.

_What is it, Hidemi-san?_

_You need to pick someone up at the airport this Sunday, and listen to what he has to tell you..._

Disbelief and initial refusal had turned into weary, half-awake acquiescence over the span of the eight-minute call and so here Jodie was now, picking up this mysterious person that Hidemi had arranged to send to her. Well, if she could find Gate 5 in Concourse C, that was...She took to her pursuit of a map with a renewed vigor, finally finding one near the food stands. She grabbed the small paper copy that was offered in a plastic drawer below the large map and eventually wound her way to Concourse C, discovering much to her deep displeasure that she had parked on the total opposite side of the airport from where she needed to go. _Just my luck... _Ahh, Gate 5! She was finally here. She immediately scanned the crowd, looking for anyone who could potentially be a contact.

"Are you Starling Jodie-san?" inquired a polite, young-sounding male voice from behind her shoulder in formal Japanese, causing her to jump a bit before she whipped around and came face to face with someone who could have _been _a slightly younger Hondou Hidemi...if she had worn round glasses, cut her hair and had been a rather fragile-looking male. He carried a carryon bag on his right shoulder that was nearly bursting at its seams, and he was wearing a dark blue collared short-sleeved shirt and neatly pressed black pants, black tennis shoes completing his ensemble. "I am," she stated, bowing slightly to be polite. "I take it you're the one Hidemi sent me to pick up?"

"Yes, thank you," replied the boy as he returned the slight, polite bow. "Hidemi-neechan gave me your description. I didn't mean to startle you." He then quickly added "I'm Eisuke. Hondou Eisuke. I don't know if you remember me, but-"

"I do," she stated with a nod. "I just never had gotten a good look at you back then, when your sister was in the hospital." _Her younger brother, the one who wound up refusing the Witness Protection Program and going to America..._

He smiled before picking up his larger suitcase bag that was by his side...and somehow managing to trip himself on that same bag after taking a single step forward. Jodie tried to help him but the boy quickly picked himself back up, brushing off her inquires about injury with a laugh and an amused-sounding "Don't worry, I am very clumsy. I'm used to it." Eisuke looked around and shifted his weight before asking "Where do you want to talk at?"

"My car is probably the safest- we'll sweep it for bugs first," replied Jodie as she indicated for the boy to follow her.

* * *

_Nine months already_...

Koizumi Akako found herself staring over at the seat that Hakuba Saguru had formerly occupied while her class was on break in between lectures, idly realizing that she was wondering yet again about the half-British teen and his sudden, strange disappearing act that he'd performed three-quarters of a year ago.

It had truly been eerie to her, Hakuba-kun simply vanishing into the night like a ghost those long nine months ago, only leaving word that he had transferred to some private business of some sort that needed his assistance and to please forward his homework to the following post office box in Paris. _Paris_, of all places! (Of course, no one but his homeroom teacher was _supposed_ to know that it was Paris; Akako had become overcome with curiosity and snuck a look at the note when it had been laying on the teacher's desk back then.)

Even all this time later, something about the whole thing sent shivers up her spine when she thought back to it. In her heart of hearts, she had to admit that she had quite possibly been developing the beginnings of an (_ugh_) crush (_stupid-sounding word_) on Hakuba-kun before he had taken off so unexpectedly, and she realized that part of her was worried about him, even though his completed homework was still sent out and delivered by courier every week like clockwork.

About the only thing that she had been able to determine with certainty was that he really _was_ still alive-wherever he was now, after all this time had passed. _Small comfort, _she thought wryly before a rubber band thwaped her in the back of the head, her mood quickly turning from contemplative to Must Kill Kuroba Kaito because she already _knew_ that he had shot it without having to ask or look.

"KUROBA! IF YOU SHOOT ANOTHER RUBBER BAND AT ME, SO HELP ME I WILL-" she cried loudly as she leapt out of her seat and turned around while letting the sentence trail off, eyes full of fire and determination as she stalked toward the class clown, who was currently laughing and pointing at her. She was ready to snap _something, _all right-namely his scrawny little neck. There was always bringing him back as a zombie servant, after all...Her anger became compounded by annoyance as she realized after grabbing him that what she had grabbed wasn't Kaito at all, but a blowup doll that looked exactly like him. "KUROBA, SHOW YOURSELF!" she demanded, deflating the blowup doll courtesy of a vicious poke and slash with a sharp pair of scissors.

"Aww, but you looked so serious and lonely, I just _had _to snap you out of it, Akako-san." Akako turned her annoyed glare upwards, to where the teen magician was hanging off of the ceiling courtesy of a small suspension kit that he had managed to rig up. "There's the Koizumi Akako we know and love!" he cried cheerfully while pointing at her, causing Akako's annoyance with him to amplify severely. Just then he started to shake rather violently.

"Come down here and face your punishment," stated Nakamori Aoko in a singsong tone from the corner of the classroom, using a broom's handle to quickly attempt a dismemberment of Kaito's suspension rig. "Sensei said no more tricks in class, Kaito!"

"HEY! Don't _do _that!" demanded Kaito, his tone half-filled with pleading as he reached out to try and prevent Aoko's attempted takedown. "If you don't take it down the right way it'll-" Just then, the broom hit home, pulling one of the wires off of its hook and Kaito fell into his desk in a heap, the rigging falling down around him and onto everyone unlucky enough to be in the room at the time. "Stupid girl," he muttered darkly as he began picking up the rigging from the floor and off of his assorted classmates, exiting the room to go store the rigging in his locker.

"What were you thinking about, Akako-chan?" inquired Aoko politely as she approached the other girl and sat in the temporarily empty desk by the witch. "I see you look out the window every once in a while, and you always look so serious when you do. Is there anything I can help with?"

Akako offered the other girl a half-smile. "It's not the window I'm looking at," she stated simply, pointing at the desk that Saguru used to occupy that was now filled with another student's belongings. "I wonder sometimes about Hakuba-kun and how he's doing."

"Oh, yeah. That was a while ago that he just suddenly left, wasn't it?" Aoko replied, offering a sympathetic look. "Didn't he transfer schools or something?"

"Something like that, I think." Akako shifted in her seat, slightly uncomfortable at having this conversation. "I just wonder sometimes why he up and left so suddenly like that. It was weird."

"Hey, in case you didn't notice, Hakuba wasn't the most normal guy himself," stated Kaito from behind Akako, causing her to leap up in surprise. "He probably found some other, snobbier school that he liked better," he added with a shrug before walking past the pair and returning to his seat.

_But he _also_ hasn't shown his face at a Kid heist since he vanished from here either. _Kaito had to admit that planning and executing his heists just wasn't the same without the highly intelligent half-Brit dogging his heels, and he himself had wondered on more than a few occasions where the teen detective had gone to so suddenly- and why. _Jeez, has it _really _been nine whole months since he left? And come to think of it...that _other_ detective, the kid, hasn't shown up in about that long either, and he was also a regular attendee of my performances..._

Just then, the teacher entered the classroom and all rose to greet him, a few stragglers rushing in as they returned late from the break. After the perfectly chorused greeting of 'Hello, sensei' the class got back underway.


	3. Chapter 3

Reviews make my day! Thanks to all watchers, reviewers and favers!

* * *

"Nee-chan said to warn you that a person was killed over having what I'm about to give you," began Eisuke in a somber tone after he and Jodie had pulled out onto the main strip in front of the airport, her white two-door rental car quickly getting lost in the maze of other automobiles that were rushing from the huge facility towards Tokyo- well, at least rushing in the sense of the incredibly oxymoronic term 'rush hour.' Eisuke continued with his explanation, becoming a bit more animated now. "Apparently they didn't even bother to interrogate him, they just shot him immediately once they found it on him. And he was a very long-time member of the group. She had to take great risks to get it smuggled out to me in my monthly letter."

_That doesn't sound very much like them, killing the guy without at least _trying_ to get who he was really working for out of him first, _thought Jodie suspiciously as her eyes narrowed. She had, of course, instantly known that the 'they' Eisuke was referring to meant the Black Organization, especially seeing as how Hidemi was the source of the information the boy was imparting._ They never act that rashly or with that little forethought- which is a big part of the problem in trying to finally bring them down for good. _"Well, what is it exactly?" _Let's see what you risked your life to try and get to me, Hidemi-san... _

"I don't even know," admitted Eisuke in a defeated tone that indicated that he wished that he did. "Nee-chan smuggled it to me tucked in my letter, like I said. It came in this sealed envelope and she said in the letter to not ever open it myself and to only give it to you." He pulled a small, black envelope out of an inner pocket of his jacket and handed it to Jodie, who placed it on the dashboard after giving it a quick once over. _Pretty thin, must only be a single piece of paper or a photograph or something along those lines..._"She also wanted me to tell you what I saw in Paris three months ago before you open it."

"Well, I can't open this thing safely while I'm driving anyhow, so go ahead with your story," replied Jodie with a grin as she focused her attention back to Eisuke after realizing that they were going nowhere in a hurry in this traffic. "What did you see in Paris three months ago?" she then added in a tone that mixed curiosity and concern. _What the hell does Paris have to do with anything? Well, I guess I'll find out..._

"Yeah. I went there on a vacation with my host family- I'm staying with a family in Boston for a year under an exchange student program. And something weird happened in an old bookstore in downtown when I did a little sightseeing by myself one afternoon..."

* * *

_Eisuke was completely enthralled by the tiny old bookstore; such cool antique books everywhere! Leather covers, cloth covers, paper pages, papyrus pages...so neat! Even though he couldn't speak French beyond a few basic phrases and therefore couldn't even come close to holding an intelligible conversation with the shopkeeper, he loved simply being in the shop and being around the old books. Of course, there was no way he could afford to even touch one, much less actually buy one, but he was still having fun, the smell of aged paper and leather assaulting his nose as he curiously poked around, the shopkeeper kindly tolerant of his clumsiness. It was a damp, chilly, rainy fall day that prevented any sort of outdoor tourism on Eisuke's part- he was _very _prone to catching colds- so he had just decided to try to find something indoors-oriented to do while his host family toured the Eiffel Tower when he had stumbled upon the tiny shop that was owned by an old woman with a sincere smile. _

_After he had been puttering about the store for an hour the entire atmosphere of the store suddenly changed; it seemed like the group of newcomers, four in total, had brought an almost palpable sense of danger and menace trailing into the small store, dragging it in behind them along with the fog and the rain that was now shedding onto the floor from their matching jackets and umbrellas. Something deep in Eisuke's instincts told him to make himself scarce as soon as he could so he hid himself in between the rows of children's books, the part of the store where he felt such a dangerous group would be least likely to want to purchase anything from. He supposed his flight instinct had been triggered by the fact that all four were dressed entirely in black; three of them were massive bodybuilder types and appeared to be bodyguards for the fourth, who was wearing a large, loose black hood that connected to a long, semi-loose ankle-length black jacket, the effect being total concealment of their face, clothing and even gender._

_The hooded one approached the small, elderly shop owner and they had a brief, very quiet conversation, in fact _so _quiet that Eisuke couldn't even hear it (not that he could have understood much even if he had made the attempt as he guessed that they were speaking French, but no way was he risking leaving his hiding spot- his internal danger alarm was not just going off, it was wailing like an air siren.) The owner smiled brightly, then nodded politely before heading to what Eisuke assumed was the back stockroom. Eisuke's eyes widened as one of the three bodyguards spoke quickly and furtively in Japanese as soon as she fully left the room; he was instantly being able to place the rough accent as being Osakan but unable to identify the voice's owner. "Did you find what you needed here?" This was asked of the hooded individual using the polite, deferential manner of speech that a worker generally used with their superior in an office or similar professional setting._

_The fourth, slighter figure merely shook its head in wordless reply, the movement barely detectable thanks to the slack of the hood, after the store's owner returned to the front showing her empty hands and making what Eisuke guessed through the body language and tone of voice were polite apologies for not having whatever book or trinket that the hooded figure was requesting. Immediately, the black-clad group turned around and the quartet quickly got into position to exit the shop, two bodyguards in front of and one behind the hooded one who definitely seemed to be their leader. Eisuke slowly peeked out from his hiding spot as the group finished loading into a small, black four-door car and departed. He emerged from the hiding spot a few minutes later after he was sure they were really gone, still shivering all over from fright._

* * *

"So you saw- well, if you can call that seeing since you were wisely hiding at the time- the Black Organization in Paris? In a bookstore?" Jodie turned her attention back to the road just in time to prevent an accident, slamming on the brakes as traffic heading towards Tokyo continued to slowly grind along in the midst of its usual slowness that ensued on Monday mornings. "That doesn't surprise me; the Organization is everywhere at all levels around the globe. So why did your sister think that it was-"

"Because she said that she wanted you to hear the story before you saw the picture. She didn't give any other reason." Eisuke offered a hopeless shrug. "But she thinks that that hooded person might have been someone very important or high up in the Organization, because they had three bodyguards and they also made a personal stop for him."

"Well, wouldn't your sister know? I mean, she _is_-"

"My sister," Eisuke explained quietly, "has told me more than once that sometimes the right hand of the Organization very deliberately does not let the left hand know what it's doing, and vice versa. So that if someone were to get arrested by the authorities or tortured, they could only give one piece of the puzzle, or nothing at all." He shifted uncomfortably in his seat before staring at the still-sealed envelope for a few moments. "So she only knows some secrets and information, like everyone else only knows some of each. It's how they work."

"That makes sense," replied Jodie with a nod as she forced herself to focus on the traffic and not the boy sitting next to her, or the black envelope lying on her dashboard that was almost begging to be opened. "Alright, I can't take it anymore," she said brightly after a few more minutes, trying to leaven the mood in the car. "Go ahead and open that envelope; I'll die of curiosity before we make it back to Tokyo with the way this traffic is."

Eisuke grabbed the envelope from the dashboard before carefully tearing the top of the envelope open and shaking out the contents. A small, white folded piece of paper with a few black splotches where ink had bled through to the other side and a 3 X 6 photograph with some tiny Japanese handwriting on it fell into his right hand. Eisuke unfolded the paper carefully and tried to read it.

**_BITTERS? QUININE? TONIC? _**

**_MISSING??_**

Jodie had to translate the frantically scrawled English handwriting on the paper since Eisuke couldn't make it out and didn't know the top three words to boot. It looked like it had been written with a thick black Sharpie marker or a similar pen, and the last word was underscored by a bold underline in addition to being written slightly larger than the others. "These are the English names of some different alcoholic beverage mixers-you use them to make cocktails with, though I'm sure you know that," she explained to Eisuke with a laugh. "Drink mixers? They planning a cocktail party or something?" she then muttered after a brief pause before nearly slapping herself on the forehead due to her own sheer slowness as the truth dawned on her after a few moments. _Idiot! The Black Organization assigns code names based on thier agent's favored liquors...maybe this is questioning the code name of someone the writer had seen? Or better yet_... "What's in that photograph, Eisuke?" _I'm willing to bet that it's a person. But assigning themselves mixers instead of liquors for code names is a new one...and why this 'Missing' note down below...?_

"Mmm, it's a picture of a boy who's my age or not much older," he commented as he studed the picture. "It looks like it was taken of him while he was looking into a mirror above a sink, maybe in a water closet or something, and it also looks like it got taken through a crack in a doorway, like the picture taker was trying to take it secretly." He flipped the photograph over and let out a delighted cry. "Oh, this is nee-chan's handwriting! She must have done this before she sealed it up." He cleared his throat and began reading it out loud. 'Jodie-san, a man died for taking this picture, and I am also fairly certain that this boy is the hooded person Eisuke saw in Paris. Try to find out who he is, and perhaps you can discover why seeing his face means instant death to any but Vermouth and _Him_.'

Jodie felt a shiver creep up her spine as Eisuke finished the sentence; she knew that _Him _was the only moniker any in the Organization ever used to refer to thier elusive head, who had never even been seen in public. _Just seeing his face is enough to get _any _member but thier head and his top lieutenant killed on the spot? I knew they were ruthless, but wow..._"Alright, what does he look like? try and describe him to me."

"He's trim, looks sort of on the tall side and has short, light brown hair and golden-toned hazel eyes. His skin is fairly light colored, and he's wearing what look like a three-piece black suit with a grey turtleneck." He blinked twice before adding "Oh, wow! And he has a brown hawk on his shoulder."


	4. Chapter 4

Thanks again to all the watchers, reviewers and favers!

* * *

He'd been against the idea from the very beginning, starting from over a year and a half ago when the wheels had first been set into motion after _He _had been approached by his favorite, Vermouth, with the information they had obtained and the plan decided on to make use of that information. It had been one of the only times anything had gone forward without _some _sort of consultation with Gin before the execution, even if the meeting beforehand was only a formality, and it made Gin highly suspicious of the whole thing. The fact that Vermouth had been the one to originate and approach _Him_ with the plan only increased Gin's unease.

Of course, what exactly the information had been was something that only _He _and Vermouth knew the full extent of, but Gin had carefully, quietly enquired of not only Vermouth but people she had known and trusted. Vermouth had finally relented three months later, tired of Gin's hounding, and after getting _His _permission she had provided Gin with a few little tidbits beyond what he had already discovered through means both fair and foul, telling him just enough to sate his curiosity but not nearly enough for him to form a full picture in his mind of what was going on or put himself at ease with the situation. Which was like having no information at all, as far as Gin was concerned- you either knew everything, or you knew nothing.

_We...did some recruiting from outside. That's all you need to know..._

_A secret makes a woman, a woman..._

Gin allowed himself a brief, discontented huff artfully designed to not cause the loss of the lit cigarette dangling in his mouth as he expertly guided his beloved Porsche through the dark, twisty country roads that eventually led to the highly rural British airport he had been asked to go pick up Quinine from. Gin felt his eyes narrow reflexively as he thought of Quinine, the mysterious agent whose face would result in an instant, non-negotiable death sentence if it was seen. Not even he, one of the ones closest to the head of the Black Organization, had ever been permitted to see Quinine's face, or even to know whether it was a male or a female hiding under that large, loose black coat that only came off when they went to the restroom or slept in their heavily guarded room.

_Thier code name is...Quinine, sir?_

_Something that helps liquor's mischief go down easily and smoothly..._

Gin hadn't liked it when back he'd heard it from their head, and he still didn't like it now, that non-standard code name of a drink mixer that to him separated the unseen agent from the rest of the Organization. He also didn't like the fact that Quinine seemed to instantly have begun occupying a position in the Organization that was above even his own to some extent, because Gin himself knew next to nothing about Quinine and there was nothing Gin found more suspicious or dangerous than the unknown. Especially an unknown quantity within their organization.

Some of Gin's long and short-range plans had been turned down on the basis that 'Quinine didn't give the go-ahead' or 'Quinine wants you to revise this part of it and get it back to _Him_.' _Who the hell are they to order me around? _Why did Quinine, who had only been around for just under a year, have so much pull and authority already? And just what had their head meant by that strange response to Gin's question about the code name? _Something that helps liquor's mischief go down easily and smoothly..._

Of course, Gin also had his suspicions that either Quinine was not acting alone in thier decision-making, or that there were even perhaps others with the Organization who shared similar non-standard code names and a similar position within the Organization- whatever that position was. He had no definitive proof to back his suspicions, yet, but he'd overheard some rather telling conversations he had arranged to hear and had been given some interesting information passed to him by loyal lackeys during this past span of time since Quinine had made his first appearance.

Once, he had gotten another agent that he knew was close to Vermouth and in her confidence, Cointreau, very drunk on some truth serum-spiked cocktails and the older man had let it slip under Gin's carefully crafted questioning that he had a meeting the next morning with a high-ranking member code-named 'Bitters.' Cointreau had suddenly become very scared-looking when he'd realized what he had said and had quickly, hastily exited the room, all the drunkenness and serum-induced relaxation gone from his eyes in an instant.

_Bitters...Quinine...The same person? Two different people? _It was the not knowing that was driving Gin mad, but he realized that he had a perfect opportunity to make some headway into the puzzle in the form of this trip, which he had initially resented as grunt work that was beneath him but had quickly come to see the potential in. He had decided as soon as getting the assignment last week to pick up Quinine and deliver him to one of their safe houses in the English countryside that he would probably never get another opportunity like this one, so he immediately arranged to have Vodka busy elsewhere on this day so that he would have the elusive Quinine all to himself, trapped in a car with him for the better part of three hours.

Just then, his cellphone rang. He recognized the ringtone as the one he had assigned to Vodka, and he picked it up with a calming, deep breath beforehand while he mentally prepared himself for the stage show he was about to put on. He knew Vodka would only be calling if everything was going according to the plan he had initiated with today in mind...

"Quinine's bodyguards got food poisoning from the plane food?" he cried in mock disbelief after Vodka had gotten done with his half of the well-rehearsed script Gin had prepared, both putting on the best acts that they could for the benefit of the listening and recording devices embedded in both of their phones. "What lousy luck. Is Quinine still going to make it to this meeting I'm picking him up for?" He allowed himself a ghost of a smile. "Good to hear, since I'm already almost to the airport. I'll check right now with- Oh, it's already been okayed that I transport him solo? Alright, then. Thanks, Vodka." He suppressed the exceedingly rare urge on his part to actually laugh as he hung up the phone.

_Time for us to chat, Quinine..._

* * *

Twenty minutes later, the person Gin had taken such elaborate pains to get alone slowly got into the backseat, taking care to not disturb their hood as they finished settling in and buckling their seat belt while black-suited attendants loaded items into Gin's trunk. "Sorry to hear about your guards. Are they going to be alright?" asked Gin while they pulled away after the attendants had finished loading everything, figuring he would start with generalities and work his way into the interrogation as they went along on the trip.

"That," came the reply in a voice so plain, sexless and monotone that Gin was absolutely certain Quinine was speaking through a voice synthesizer, "is something you'd know better than I would. After all, you're the one who arranged for them to ingest whatever it was that poisoned or sickened them, not me." Gin felt a single drop of sweat form and slowly slide down the right side of his head before being absorbed by his hat's band, though he carefully, instantly schooled his face to show no reaction to the (correct, of course) accusation_. How in the hell-?_

"I've heard you've been inquring about me," Quinine continued in that unearthly, synthesized voice. "I've also heard about you and seen how you operate. I figured you might try and get me alone on this trip to get some of your questions answered." The figure shifted in the backseat, settling down into the car's seat some. "I really should have said something to _Him _immediately, or maybe said something to my bodyguards before they ate out of those carefully marked food containers after I realized what exactly you had planned, but I figured I would reward you for all the time and effort you put into getting me alone like this."

For the first time in as long as Gin could remember, he felt something he vaguely recalled as the icy grip of fear grabbing his stomach and squeezing it tightly. He...he was actually_... No, I'm NOT afraid. I _won't_ be! This was my whole plan! I'm not going to let it go to waste_... "What do you mean you've seen how I operate? We've never met before." He brushed away his brief moment of terror from earlier and looked in the rearview, still unable to see anything more than that stupid hood that completely obliterated Quinine's identity.

Gin felt another trickle of sweat, this one sliding down the small of his back, as Quinine looked up into the rearview. Gin noticed that those instense eyes, filled with anger and intelligence, were very strange: They were mostly deep blue, but there were curious little white flecks here and there in them that lent them an eerie, almost inhuman aura.

"Oh, we've met before. Multiple times, Gin." With that, Quinine broke eye contact and dug into a small plastic bag they had brought with them, pulling out a book of some sort that Gin couldn't quite see because Quinine was holding it just below the rearview mirror, then pulling out a small reading light and attatching it to the upper part of the book before Quinine began focusing all of thier attention on the book, apparently willing to leave the conversation at that.

Gin, however, was not.

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?" he retorted a few minutes later to the hooded figure, tired of the games and dancing around that was being done concerning Quinine. He had gone to all this trouble to arrange this time, and he was _going_ to get his answers before this trip was over, dammit! "Stop wearing that hood! And stop using that goddamn voice synthesizer and let me hear your actual voice!" _Calm down, calm down, _Gin thought to himself. _Don't let this person get under your skin this bad...You can't let that happen..._

"Are you absolutely certain that you want me to do either of those, Gin?" came the reply from the backseat a few minutes later. "It would be your death if word ever got out that you saw me or heard my voice." A shuffling of pages was next, followed by "But I'll do it if you want me to. I told you, this is your reward for going to those lengths that you did to talk to me. And if _He_ hears anything about it, it won't be from me."

"Do it" broke the tension-filled silence in the car a few minutes later.

The car then nearly swerved off the road as Quinine removed thier hood and a ghost appeared in Gin's rearview mirror.


	5. Chapter 5

Thanks to all the watchers, reviewers and favers! :)

* * *

_This is ridiculous...A sandy blonde-haired boy with a pet hawk cannot _possibly_ be this hard to track down_, thought Jodie crossly as she continued digging through the old newspapers piled in front of her, focusing her efforts on French and British papers but perusing the occasional Japanese crime and obituary section as well. _Of course, it does seem to be the Black Organization who's helped him vanish, and two of the things they're best are covering their tracks in crimes they're involved in and hiding the former identities of their members..._

"Nothing yet in the Japanese or American papers I have here, Jodie-san," Eisuke called from the other side of the long table that was covered in stacks of old newspapers that hadn't been microfilmed yet because they weren't quite old enough, disappointment coloring his tone as he dug into yet another stack of them in an attempt to unearth the mystery boy's identity. "I'm all the way back to eight months ago, too."

"Don't worry. We'll find something eventually. My well-honed investigator's intuition tells me so," said Jodie with a grin as she returned to digging through the British papers. "I'm back to nine and a half months ago myself and I haven't found anything either. Remember for now to just focus on the crime sections and the obituaries, it helps things go faster."

"How's it going?" inquired the librarian, a sturdy middle-aged woman with glasses as she entered the research room that the pair had taken over. "Find who you were looking for yet?"

"Unfortunately no, but we haven't given up yet, still plenty left," replied Jodie as the librarian entered the room with a cart to remove the newspapers that they were done looking through.

"Oh, is this who you're trying to find?" the librarian's eyes filled with thought as she studied the picture Jodie had laying by her side on the table briefly before putting it back down and returning to her task at hand. "You know...he seems vaguely familiar now that I've seen his picture and I'm thinking about it...but I can't quite put my finger on where I've seen him..."

"Recently?" cried Jodie, leaping up from her seat and causing the librarian to give a start. "This is really important. Try and remember as best you can."

"No, definitely not recently...Maybe a year or more ago...but I remember that face, kind of...from television or the the newspaper...Something about an arrest, maybe?" She shook her head as she collected the last of the old papers. "Sorry, I just can't think of the exact details. But I know for certain it was over a year ago, if not maybe longer." With an apologetic shrug, she left the room with the packed cart.

"Alright, time to jump back to a year or more. Let's go, Eisuke!"

Twenty minutes later, both found him at the exact same time.

"FOUND HIM!" came the simultaneous cry of triumph as both hefted up the crime sections of two newspapers, one British and one Japanese.

"Here he is in a Japanese crime story from a year and a half ago- It looks like he was a detective who worked with the police to solve the crime." Eisuke held out the enlarged front-page story of the boy, who had the hawk perched on his shoulder even back then. "His name is given as Hakuba Saguru."

"He solved a case in England as well in that same month- looks like he was very productive," Jodie added. "Let's see what else we can find before he vanished, and maybe we can figure out about what time he disappeared too."

"I can tell you exactly when it was. To the day," stated an older, feminine voice in from the doorway of the room in firm, unwavering Japanese. Eisuke and Jodie looked up to see a smaller woman wearing a large, round pair of glasses, with a head of full, brilliant white hair that matched her white, neatly pressed suit jacket outfit. "It was nine months and one week ago."

She walked over to Jodie's desk and picked up the picture Jodie had brought with her, smiling warmly as she apparently realized that it had been taken fairly recently. "My friend the librarian called me when she saw who you were searching for. I'm just glad he's still alive, wherever he is."

She sniffed once delicately then looked both of the others in the eye. "My name is Minawa- Minawa Shiori. I was overjoyed to hear that someone is looking for Saguru, even if it is after all this time already passing." Unfurling the newspaper Jodie had been holding and placing her hand on the edge of the photograph of the long-missing teen detective, she sighed and then added "Since his parents never bothered," in a tone filled with loathing while staring down at the old newspaper picture with eyes full of a mixture of sadness and steel.

"You knew Hakuba Saguru? How so?" inquired Jodie formally.

"I was his long-time governess, from the time he was a small child," Shiori explained, her expression brightening as she turned to face Jodie. "His parents got a divorce when he was fairly small and so they decided to hire me to take care of him. Of course, as he got older I became more of an assistant to him, helping him with his detective work."

This was followed by a depressed sigh. "Until that night when I went to pick him up at the airport and found he had never gotten on his connecting flight, that is..." She shook her head sadly. "I guess I just feel like I should have seen something was wrong." Her eyes filled with anger again suddenly. "It was _that woman_, I know it. He was never the same after she showed up and had that meeting with him..."

* * *

His cape flapped in the breeze wildly as he held onto his spotless white top hat with an equally spotless white-gloved hand, Kuroba Kaito in his incarnation as Kaitou Kid grinning to himself as he watched the police mill around like ants down below, lights and sirens winking at the night playfully. He had suspected that due to the Ice Star's location- in a museum opening gala that was directly located across from Tokyo's police headquarters- that there would be a particularly heavy police presence at this particular heist. He had felt an almost giddy sense of anticipation about this heist ever since he had finished scouting out the place and deciding the best time and date to steal the gem.

_Five more minutes till showtime... _He picked up a small two-way radio he had tucked into a breast pocket and quietly whispered "Are we a go?" after pressing the small 'send' button on the unit.

"We're ready at the time the note says, yep," replied Konsuke Jii, his voice crackling slightly with static. "Doesn't look like the police have spotted the rigs, either. No one ever notices maintenance men working, that's one thing you can be fairly sure of," he added with a chuckle.

"Roger that," replied Kaito as he began to feel the adrenaline and thrill that always began to build in him in the last few minutes leading up to a heist. At first it had been almost uncontrollable- and had nearly cost him dearly the first few outings, but the Magician of the Moonlight had learned by this point to not only control the adrenaline that began pumping riotously during his heists, but to use it to his advantage at times as well.

"KAIIIIIIIIIIIIIII-TOU KIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIID!" Someone had started a chant down below and the crowd had picked up on it immediately, the chant quickly rising in volume from a dull roar to a loud one, some people even shaking the fence that the police had put up to restrain the onlookers in an effort to be closer to the action. Kaito couldn't help the silly, happy grin that slowly spread itself across his face when he heard it. _Well, my audience is calling. Time for the show to start... _He pulled out his glider with actions so familiar he didn't even have to think about them anymore and leapt off of the building at an angle that would place him right above the mob.

"THERE HE IS!" someone yelled loudly just as the chant had begun to quiet down, and the crowd started a full-on decibel blast of cheering and screaming as Kid slid quietly through the night high above them and landed somewhere on the museum's roof.

"GET HIM!" Nakamori Ginzo-keibu's all-too-familiar voice drifted into Kid's ear as he hastily donned the disguise of a janitor that he and Jii had prepared earlier in the week. The janitor that Kaito was temporarily playing the role of was currently indisposed in a nearby closet, having been given a sound whack over the head. "You!" Nakamori barked as he approached the disguised Kid, "have you seen Kaitou Kid go by here?"

"No, sir," Kaito replied in a perfect imitation of the unconscious janitor's voice, having rehearsed it from a videotape Jii obtained for him. "I heard all the commotion on the roof but never saw him go this way. Heard the fire escape stairs rattling down that way, though," he added brightly, pointing to a nearby fire escape that led down to the museum's jewel exhibit. As Kaito had hoped, this immediately caused Nakamori to order the police to all head downstairs- which was precisely where he wanted them.

He walked over to where he and Jii had figured out the jewel would be located on the floor below and began to wiggle the circular hole they had cut earlier in the week loose, smiling when he looked down and saw that they were so worried about Kid being downstairs that they weren't bothering to case the ceiling. He took out the small tool he would use to accomplish his mission, a small, powerful, completely clear glass cutter attached to the end of an equally clear length of stiff tubing, and began to slowly lower it down, managing to cut the full circle in the top of the jewel case that he needed without anyone noticing it. _Good. Don't have to go to Plan B_, he thought happily while pulling the tubing back up before stripping his janitor's costume off and revealing the white Kid outfit once more.

"Alright, Jii. Ready when you are," he whispered, and the window behind him opened softly as Jii slid in, carrying the rigging needed for a quick getaway after he used his usual smokescreen to get away. Within five minutes, the pair set it up and Kaito was ready for the actual theft. With a final nod to Jii, he hooked himself up to the clear wires and leapt down through the larger hole they cut. "Hello! Time for me to take this pretty little diamond and be going, I'm afraid."

"KID! Dammit, where'd he come from? GET HIM!"

Kaito merely smiled and punched his hand down in the hole he had previously created, grabbing the large diamond and its display box before throwing out his smokescreen and disappearing upwards in the confusion, aided by Jii. "Let's move!" he yelled, the pair sliding back out the window, Jii going down and Kaito reassembling his glider before taking off from the roof again to a huge round of applause, the cheering growing wilder once he flashed the large diamond he was carrying, the searchlights focused on him only making it shine all the more. As was his typical practice, he turned ninety degrees after gliding for a bit to send the police off in another direction, making a good landing and quickly disassembling the glider while Jii pulled up in the battered van they sometimes used.

"I'll look at it when we get back to headquarters," stated Kid flatly before realizing that there was a small piece of paper tucked in between the diamond and its display box. Curious now, Kaito slowly took out the carefully folded piece of paper.

**If you're reading this, good work tonight, Number Four. I'll be seeing you soon.**

He blinked twice, completely unsure of what this phrase in trim, feminine-looking handwriting meant, before shrugging and relaxing, allowing himself to fully enjoy what was left of the now-ebbing adrenaline rush.


	6. Chapter 6

Thanks again to all the watchers, reviewers and favers! :)

* * *

It had taken Akako a few minutes of initial confusion before she realized with a sudden burst of surprised, shocked happiness who had sent her the plain white envelope that currently lay nestled in her hand, bearing her name on the front of it; she had nearly forgotten about writing the letter she'd sent off in the first place on a hurried, sudden impulse over a month ago. She had walked in the door from school earlier that afternoon to find her mom waiting for her with the envelope in her hand.

_Here, dear, this came for you today, I guess...It doesn't have a stamp or return address, but it was sitting in the mailbox and it has your name on it._

Even though there were no other external markings or indicators of the sender besides her handwritten name, neatly and precisely jotted down- using the correct kanji, even-! she felt a smile emerge on her face unbidden as she knew that finally, after what seemed like so very long following the day she finally mustered the courage to actually sit down, write him a letter and send it off to the address he'd left for his schoolwork to be sent to, praying it would get to him alright and wondering if he would reply, Hakuba-kun had written her back.

She slowly opened the envelope and found that he'd carefully enclosed one of Watson's soft under-feathers that the hawk must have shed along with his letter, which was crisply folded into thirds and written on high-quality paper that Akako could see the watermark stamped in. _Actually, this feather will make a great spell focus when I try to locate him again- I suppose this feather would count as an object close to him for the purposes of the searching spell since it did come from his hawk he loves so much..._Akako placed the feather into a small jar to use later before opening his letter.

_Koizumi-san,_

_Thanks for writing. It was very nice to get a letter from someone over there in Japan; you're the first one who's written to me since I decided to take this job here in France as a business consultant. I suppose that coming here was one way to learn French quickly, since, well, all of the meetings and business are conducted almost completely in French. It took some getting used to, but I'd like to think I'm beginning to understand the language more. It's a very busy, but also very interesting job most of the time, even if I have to struggle to find time for homework and studying in between work and rest. Has it really only been nine months since I left? It feels like much longer for some reason. _

_The weather here in this part of the country is very dreary this time of year; I don't think I've ever seen it rain quite so much before in my life, but it seems like the long-time residents around here are used to it so I imagine it's always like this right now. Watson is restless because she can't get out and fly around outdoors too much in this downpour, but I try to make it up to her by not keeping her in her cage too much. Her feather fell right on top of this letter as I was writing it and it seemed like she was asking me to send it to you, so I did._

_How is everything back there at the school, and how is everyone? Since my homework is still getting to me and being returned to me with grades on it I'll assume that Kuroba-kun hasn't managed to burn the school down with one of his ridiculous, childish pranks yet. I don't think that I'll ever be able to forget that day two years ago when he managed to convince everyone- even Aoko and I, who should have both known better- that he was the class's substitute teacher for fully half of the school day before the real teacher was discovered at home and in bed with the same flu our regular teacher had caught. _

_Well, unfortunately I can't really write for too much longer- it's a short letter, I know it and I apologize- since I'm normally asleep right now and need to be well-rested for tomorrow. You can write me back again at this address if you'd like; it shouldn't be changing anytime soon. It's a very small, very rural post office that we have out here, however- only a staff of two, if you can believe that!- so there may be some delay in my reply, as I'm sure there was with you receiving this letter. _

_Hope to hear from you,_

_Hakuba Saguru_

As soon as Akako was done reading, then rereading the letter, soaking in every word and detail he had written as much as she could, she found a worry suddenly knawing at the back of her mind- the sort of worry and premonition that was caused by her witchcraft-endowed 'danger sense', as she had decided to term it long ago.

This particular sense was triggered by either being physically near someone who was in danger, or by holding something in her hand that was closely tied to the person in peril. Blinking in puzzlement- How had the paper triggered this feeling, while Watson's feather had not?- Akako began to study at the paper more closely and realized that across the top of the paper she had recently placed her hands on was a thin, carefully concealed rusty brown line that looked very much to her eyes like old, dried blood. And if this had been sent through a post office, what post office would process an envelope with no stamp on it?

Her sense of dread and fear for his safety increased sharply when she remembered that she had actually told Hakuba about this particular ability of hers quite a while ago, when he had asked about it after overhearing her forewarn a girl not to go home down a certain street because she had sensed that something on the street would strike and kill the girl after picking up the girl's headband. _This blood across the top of the page...and the feather...Hakuba-kun sent them both to me deliberately hoping that my danger sense would kick in..._

* * *

"Agasa-hakase, dinner is ready," called Miyano Shiho, also known as Haibara Ai, downstairs into the lab where the professor was working- as he always was nowadays. It seemed to her that he had really thrown himself into his work to perhaps a degree that was detrimental to his health since the bizarre, sudden departure of Kudo-kun all those months ago, and there were times that she wondered if the two events were correlated. In fact she actually suspected as much, but the Professor avoided the topic like a deadly plague.

_Shinichi has decided to go to a private school in Germany suddenly...he won't be living with Ran-chan and Mouri-tantei anymore, or going to that elementary school he's been attending...We've made the arrangements for him already. He was so insistent on it!_

_Believe us, it's just as much of a shock for us as it is for you...It came completely out of left field...Could those people that shrunk him have picked up his trail and made him decide to go into hiding...?_

"Thank you, Haibara-san," came the muffled reply as the professor came up the steps, careful to always use her adopted name-you never knew who could be listening. "I hadn't realized that it was this late already..." He was holding a sheet in his hand that he looked at with a horror-filled expression before rapidly stuffing it into his torn lab coat pocket.

"Professor, what are you working on down there? I'm honestly beginning to worry about you, you know," the woman trapped in a child's body near-snapped at Agasa as he sat down to the table. "You're always down there distracting yourself with your work, ever since that day Kudo-kun's parents called you with that strange news that he was suddenly leaving for Germany..."

"How many times have I told you," asked the professor quietly as he looked up at her with a pleading look that matched his tone of voice, "that I would prefer not to discuss that? At all, whatsoever?"

"Well, it seems to be at the root of a lot of problems with you that are occurring now, _still_," replied Shiho wearily in between bites of curry, tired of hammering at the brick wall of his obstinacy every day and seemingly getting nowhere. "You don't even _eat _sometimes unless I remind you to these days. You were never like that before he left." But Shiho left it at that when he made no move to reply, knowing all the signs that Agasa was becoming the stubborn, recalcitrant tortoise retreating into his shell of silence.

Later that night, Shiho decided to take matters into her own hands and try to do a little poking around in Agasa-hakase's laboratory after he fell asleep- investigation within the part of his laboratory that he steadfastly refused to permit Shiho entry into, that strange second room that he kept insisting that there was nothing at all in. After waiting long enough in her own room that she was certain he was dead to the world, Shiho quietly slipped out of her bed and began to slink expertly down the hallway that led to the living room, carefully avoiding every squeaky floorboard along the way.

Five minutes later, she stood in his laboratory in front of the door he always vanished behind when he wanted to be alone. Of course, there was a key on said door, but Shiho had a copy of the key already in her pocket, created earlier in the week behind Agasa's back when they had been at a hardware store for just this purpose.

_Sorry, Agasa-hakase, I know this is an invasion of your privacy, but it's ultimately for your own good. And for the good of the Shounen Tanteidan that Kudo-kun left behind so suddenly as well, _the image of the group's tear-filled, shocked expressions on the first day Kudo-kun hadn't shown up in class and then receiving the news that he wouldn't be coming back still unshaken from Shiho's mind after all these months. The mental image of those chidren crying and pleading with her to know _why_ steeled her resolve to the point where she firmly inserted the key into the lock and turned it, the door only making the barest whisper of noise as it opened to admit the shrunken scientist.

She wasn't quite sure what she had expected in the strange room that Agasa secluded himself in so frequently, but she had not expected it to be so...empty.

Oh, there were filing cabinets everywhere, she had discovered them after snapping on the single, bare bulb that the room used for light, but all of the drawers were as bare and barren as a beach boardwalk on a cold, rainy January morning. There was also a large table in the center of the room, but it was immaculately, spotlessly clean- there weren't even any of the little nicks and scratches that that sort of large, flat stainless steel table usually acquired over time and use. _But, _she thought with narrowed eyes and furrowed brow, _if the room is this bare, why does he spend so much time in here? No, there must be something here, some hidden thing that I'm missing..._

Shiho was determined to find it.


	7. Chapter 7

I'd love to hear some theories as to what's going on! ;)

* * *

"Mom, do you have my birth certificate handy? There's something I want to look at real quick..."

Kuroba Akita felt herself reflexively stiffen up for a moment after the question was asked as her son entered their house after school (a few minutes late, she realized,) wondering what he could possibly want to know about his birth parents that would be on the piece of paper, but she relaxed again and shrugged her shoulders before stopping her chores and drying her hands on her apron. "Of course I do, but it will take me a few minutes to get to it. It's locked in the safe."

She turned and looked at her son, who was definitely not in his usual joking, jovial mood. "Is there any reason in particular you'd like to see it?" She didn't mind that he wanted to see it- she and Toichi had always been very open with Kaito about the fact that he was adopted, after all, deciding on that course of action with him from the day that the adoption had been finalized- but she was still wondering why he was wearing that strange, pensive expression and what his birth certificate could possibly hold for him...

Kaito shifted uncomfortably on his feet for a few moments while looking down at the floor before meeting his mother's eyes again. "Well, you see, this lady showed up after school today..."

"A lady?" inquired his mother, wanting to hear more about this since it clearly had her son so worked up and so unlike himself right now. She opened the cupboards, poured them both a glass of water and sat down at the kitchen table before indicating for Kaito to come sit at the other seat, which he slowly did after realizing what his mother was asking.

"Yeah," Kaito finally replied a few moments after sitting down and apparently making up his mind to tell the story. "When I went to go walk home from school today this black car was waiting there down the street a little ways in a parking lot- a four-door black car. Then a slightly plump, short black-haired woman got out of it when I walked by the car and thanked me." There was no way, of course, that Kaito would or could ever let her know that for a panicked, fear-laced moment he had thought Snake and his minions had decided to come after him, his family or his friends (or perhaps even all three) in broad daylight. They _had_ known his father Toichi's name, after all...

"Thanked you?"

"Yeah. That was the weird part. She thanked me, but I'd never seen her before in my life," Kaito explained. "So I asked her what she meant, and she said 'Aren't you that young man that helped me translate so much when I was on vacation in Germany last year?'" While his mother stared at him with a puzzled expression, he nodded again. "Exactly. I've never even _been_ in Germany, much less been able to speak German fluently."

He then took a sip of the water Akita had placed on the table for him in a mug and continued. "Then when I explained to her that I had no idea what she was talking about and that I'd never visited Germany before, she looked at me and said 'Oh. Well, that's surprising. I really thought it was you, which was why I waited here for you after seeing you walk home this way the other day. That young man could have been your twin.'" He looked up at her, and Akita suddenly, fully understood.

"I see," Akita stated with a nod and smile. "Well in that case, I'll be right back." _This woman that showed up raised the distinct possibility that he has a twin out there somewhere- and who knows, he just might, we never found out much about the circumstances of his birth before we took him home- so he probably wants his birth mother's name so he can see if a second certificate was issued at the same time. It makes sense, and he should be able to do the search quickly enough. _

She entered her bedroom just as she had finished her musing and walked into the closet, where the small fire safe lay tightly locked and snug in its corner on the upper right hand shelf. She carefully opened the safe (it was touchy) and extracted the carefully folded Certificate of Live Birth that was in it, tucked among the other personal papers.

"Here you are," she called as she quickly reentered the kitchen, her voice snapping Kaito out of gazing aimlessly out the window as he turned to her with a dazed look that lasted only a moment before clearing into a happy, relaxed expression that was far more usual for the teenage magician's face to be wearing. "Just be careful with it, it's the only copy I have," she added with a smile as she placed it onto the table.

"Thanks. I'll be back soon, I have my phone on me," he added quickly as he got up, gently took the certificate, put on his coat and headed out the door to head to the library for some research. He couldn't explain why, but he had the curious feeling that he already somehow _knew_ exactly what he was looking for; it was just a matter of finding it- whatever that 'it' was. _Well, I suppose looking up her name would be a good start. _He carefully opened the certificate as he strolled down the sidewalk towards the library that was a few blocks away, beginning to scan the certificate for his biological mother's name.

What Kaito didn't see thanks to his focus elsewhere was a small, white two-door car that held the woman who had spoken to him earlier in the day, carefully tucked in among some trees in the back sector of a fairly empty parking lot another two blocks or so down from where they'd had thier earlier encounter. As she saw Kaito walking down the street, serious face scanning an aging, fragile piece of paper that he was carefully holding, her slightly plump face broke into a wide smile.

"Good to see your instincts are in the right place, my other silver bullet-kun," she whispered to herself happily as she watched him enter the library before she started up the car and drove off into the brilliant fall afternoon.

* * *

"What the hell is going on here?! What is she THINKING?!"

Gin quickly whipped around when he heard footsteps crunching in the leaves behind him after he hissed these comments to himself quietly, having not meant those comments to be heard by any but himself. _I really hope I don't have to shoot somebody...I'm not in the mood to right now..._

"Aniki, are you talking to yourself?" inquired Vodka's familiar voice, the agent coming around from the back of Gin's Porsche that was currently parked in front of the safe house Quinine had been delivered to an hour ago. "What the hell _who's_ thinking?" _Aniki never talks to himself like that..._

"It's better if you don't know anything about it," snapped the blonde gruffly before fishing his cigarettes out of his pocket and realizing that his hands were still lightly shaking from the shock that had come after Quinine's face was revealed to him.

_Surprised, Gin? I know you are. After all, I'm supposed to be dead..._

_The poison you gave me didn't kill me..._

He had demanded that Quinine tell him what exactly had gone on, but the boy (he couldn't remember his name, but he certainly remembered that face and giving him the poison since it had been one of the only times Gin had personally used the stuff) had merely sat back in the seat and said nothing more, stating that that was one set of questions that he refused to answer. _But I gave him the apotoxin! I placed it in his mouth and MADE him swallow it back then! How the HELL did he not die?!_

"Aniki, did you accidentally see Quinine's face or something? Don't worry, I'll help lie for you if Quinine tries to say you did," Vodka quickly spat out with a nod accompanying the emphatic statement. "You won't get executed."

"I _told _you," Gin replied in a low hiss, "to _drop it_."

"It's OK, aniki." Vodka leaned slightly towards the other and added in a conspiratorial, breathless whisper "I haven't told anyone this yet but I've heard Bitters's real voice. He was in the backseat but his bodyguards weren't there yet and the soundproof partition in between the front and backs wasn't up because we weren't driving yet, and he seemed too wrapped up in the call to realize that he wasn't using his voice changer." He took a deep breath when he had finished.

"Oh?" inquired Gin in an equally quiet tone as he lit a cigarette and took the first wonderful, soothing puff. "So there is more than one of them, then. What did he sound like?"

"He had a young voice and a real thick Osakan accent," replied Vodka immediately. "And he called someone ahou a lot when he took the phone call on a cell phone that looks different from ours."

"Called someone ahou? The hell?" _And a non-standard cell phone? _he added mentally, not liking that last detail at all- another deviation from the norm, and deviations were dangerous things that could potentially lead to disaster. _Why the hell are these guys getting all kinds of things others would be shot or at least tortured for?_

"Yeah. Oop, ssh," Vodka hissed as he pointed to the door of the safe house which was opening. The two quickly broke apart and entered their respective vehicles while the other hooded figure, thier bodyguards and Quinine slowly emerged from the house. Quinine quickly ducked in and buckled up, no longer concerned about his hood falling down with just Gin in the car now that his secret was out- at least to Gin.

"I wonder if it's even really him," the boy muttered darkly as the Porsche started, not bothering with the voice synthesizer either. _So Bitters is definitely a male as well...Vodka said Bitters sounded male and now Quinine just used 'he'..._

"What do you mean by that?" inquired Gin mildly, honestly curious about the quiet, sad statement.

"None of your beeswax," Quinine eventually stated in reply while still staring out the window, but the tone was unvindictive enough that Gin knew he could get at the information if he wanted to badly enough. It was only a question of time and patience- and asking the right people the right questions. _I'll find out everything eventually...what the hell are you up to, Vermouth? _"Are the guards going to be alright?" the boy continued, shaking Gin out of his machinations.

"What?" Gin managed to spit out a few moments later, as surprised at the question itself as the fact that a boy with eyes that hardened and angry would ask it.

"Whatever you gave them- will it kill them?"

"Of course not. I'm not stupid enough to kill my own people with a very good reason to do it," Gin snarled in reply. "It's just a nasty case of food poisoning, that's all."

"Good," Quinine replied simply as they fully exited the rural area the safe house was located in and pulled onto the first tenuous dirt lane in the area that had the moxy to actually call itself a road, a tiny sign indicating that it was Route 43.


	8. Chapter 8

Reviews make my day!

* * *

"So this woman you're referring to," began Jodie as she settled down into the driver's seat across from Shiori, notepad and pen in hand ready to take notes during the interview out of sheer well-developed habit, "how long ago did this woman you're referring to show up? What was her name? What did she look like? What happened exactly?" _Although I'm fairly certain that I know the group that sent her there already to talk to him..._

Jodie, Eisuke and Shiori had quickly moved from the library to the confines of Jodie's rental car after deciding to talk further, beginning the conversation again after rechecking the vehicle for bugs. Jodie's first instinct upon hearing the bare bones of the story had been that perhaps the boy had been kidnapped and was being held by the Black Organization to force the police to let them get away with thier plans- after all, what better axe to hold over the neck of the police than the life of the police commissioner's son? But as soon as she had brought this possibility up to Shiori, the other woman had shaken her head firmly and simply replied "He left on his own. And his father knows why, but refuses to say."

Shiori shut her eyes and leaned back into the seat, concentrating briefly before she began, preempting the round of questioning about that last statement that Jodie had been about to begin because she was still processing the enormity of what Shiori had just said. _His father knows why but refuses to say? What on Earth-? _

"That woman, Saiyano Yukina...I'll never forget a single detail about her or that strange visit that Saguru began changing so much after," she replied quietly but firmly while she folded her arms into her lap and reopened her eyes. "She showed up about a year ago to our home out of the blue rather early one Sunday morning- there hadn't been an appointment made or anything, which was very unusual because Saguru's father was always gone to his job so he could only see people if they arranged it beforehand and Saguru-botchama almost never saw anyone without an appointment either..."

* * *

_"Good morning. I apologize for calling so early, but there's someone I very much need to see that lives here and I know how busy he can get later in day."_

_The slightly plump, black-haired woman waited expectantly on the front landing for Shiori to do or say something after this brisk, sure statement greeted Shiori following the opening of the door, the woman clutching a thick brown briefcase in one hand and a new-looking brown overcoat draped loosely over her other arm thanks to a beautiful, balmy fall morning rendering the coat unnecessary._

_"What's your name? And do you have an appointment scheduled?" Shiori didn't think that she looked at all dressed for business or any sort of meeting, the other woman wearing a simple, plain white knit sweater and tan slacks with white penny loafers completing the outfit, but Shiori supposed it was none of her business._

_"Saiyano. Saiyano Yukina," replied the woman with a tight bow. "I don't have an appointment, but I think he'll want to see me anyway." She held up the briefcase slightly, apparently wordlessly indicating that whatever it contained would be one of the main topics of discussion._

_"Which 'he'?" Shiori inquired rather shortly, very nearly letting rudeness slip into her tone before reminding herself that this was a potential guest and that such a display would be unforgivable to either of the two men in the house. "There are two of them that live here."_

_"Saguru Hakuba," replied Yukina simply. Shiori didn't like the strange feeling of fear in the pit of her stomach that this woman gave her, but since she was at the door it would be the height of inhospitality to not at least go and see if Saguru was willing to see this strange woman who had shown up unannounced. Shiori reluctantly let her in the front door and showed her to the waiting room before heading upstairs and knocking gently on Saguru's door._

_"You can leave the tea outside, thanks Shiori," came the bright, clear reply- Saguru was always an early riser, and he was no doubt already buried in one of his Holmes books or Agatha Christie mysteries._

_"I'm still working on the tea, but it's not that, botchama," she replied. "You have a caller waiting, though she doesn't have an appointment." This statement was followed by movement and shuffling on the other side of the door, then Saguru opening the door with Watson on his shoulder and a slightly puzzled look on his face._

_"Someone this early? And without an appointment? Good thing I get up so early and I'm already dressed I suppose," he muttered before heading down the stairs and into the study that both he and his father recieved vistors in, when his father was actually at home to recieve them that was. "Send her into the study, I guess. And bring my tea if you would, and see what she'd like to drink."_

_"He'll see you, please follow me," stated Shiori primly before escorting Yukina into the study after the latter rose up off the couch with a bright smile suddenly appearing on her face. _

_As Shiori exited the room a few minutes later after making sure that both had thier requested beverages, she heard Yukina say "I'm so very glad to finally meet you, Hakuba Saguru." Then as Shiori exited the room and began to shut the door behind her, she heard the loud thud of what she guessed was Yukina's thick briefcase being placed on the desk and locks unsnapping before Yukina asked a very strange question in a far quieter tone that Shiori was certain Yukina had absolutely not meant her to overhear._

_"Tell me, meitantei, did you ever wonder why you're so smart?"_

* * *

"Huh?" Jodie finally managed to reply after a few moments. "What the heck kind of question is that?" Both she and Eisuke stared at Shiori with puzzled expressions.

"Weird, really weird" was Eisuke's contribution. "So what happened after that? You said-"

"I don't know what she meant by that question. But what I _do_ know is that it was two hours later after she left that Saguru-botchama began to slowly change." Shiori shifted in the seat a little, clearly uncomfortable at recalling the memories. "Oh, it was nothing hugely, glaringly obvious, but there were several subtle things. He quit asking for the crime section to be pulled out and placed on top of the rest of the paper before I brought it to him in the mornings. He quit calling his father every day and asking about cases. He never instantly volunteered to race down to crime scenes and help the police anymore. He-" She paused and let out a sigh. "To sum it up briefly, it was as if he had suddenly, completely lost all interest in the detective work that he loved so very much. And he was like that up until the very day he vanished."

"Wow. Did you ever ask him what happened, or what she talked to him about?" inquired Eisuke.

"I tried. Many times, once I saw how much he was changing overall. That was one subject he was never willing to discuss, not even with me which is saying something. It may not seem like it now, but we were very close- he was like a son to me." She suddenly sat up ramrod straight, her eyes filling with anger. "Which was why it infuriated me so much when he vanished and his parents acted like nothing had happened at all."

"What do you mean by that? Wouldn't his parents have-"

"I mean exactly that," replied Shiori in a soft tone filled with hatred and rancor, cutting off Jodie in midsentence. "When he didn't get off the plane, I immediately called his father once I realized that he was gone. That man simply told me to come home and that Saguru probably wouldn't be coming back, just like he had said in the note." She cleared her throat, then resumed. "Neither of his parents even bothered to ever file a missing persons report either. It was almost as if they didn't _want _him to be found,"she finished as her eyes filled with tears. "That was why I quit that job the morning after Saguru vanished. I walked in to clean my things out and went to check his room- and it was already completely bare. Like they had just wiped him out of thier minds already!"

"That's very strange. I wonder what happened." Eisuke broke the silence after a few thought-filled seconds. "Maybe we could ask his father or mother-"

"You don't think I haven't tried that already?" asked Shiori wearily as she leaned back into the seat and closed her eyes. "The one time I even tried to bring Saguru up to him, when I was cleaning out my things the morning that I quit in disgust at thier handling of the situation, I asked him what he had meant on the phone that night when he had said 'I know why he left.' He just looked right at me and said 'Did I say that? You must have been hearing things.'" A disgusted huff. "So his parents will be of little to no help at all, more likely no help."

"Well, have you tried tracking down the woman, Saiyano Yukina?" Jodie seemed struck by a sudden burst of inspiration. "Maybe she could be a place to start."

"That woman doesn't exist, at least not with that particular name," replied Shiori in a tone of total defeat as Eisuke and Jodie emitted sad-sounding sighs in perfect unison. "I spent five months and a good deal of yen trying to find any trace of her- there were absolutely no public records in her name at all. She's like a ghost who came to steal Saguru away then vanished again."

"What makes you think that she was involved in it besides that conversation she and Saguru had that he acted so differently after?"

"She was the one who handed me Saguru-botchama's farewell note, that's what!" Eisuke and Jodie both shot her shocked glances. "I didn't recognize her until I got home from the airport and started packing up my things- her appearance had changed slightly- but it was definitely her. She placed the note Saguru had sent for me when he vanished that night right into my hand. Her and that stupid, knowing grin of hers..."

"Well, I don't know where he is exactly, but I can tell you that there's a high probability he's been pulled into a highly dangerous group known as the Black Organization," commented Jodie sadly. "That picture you saw that I was working from? An informant I have inside the group sent it to me at great risk to thier safety and asked if I could figure out who he was." _But what would drive the son of the police commissioner away from the detective work he enjoyed so much, at least according to Shiori who seems to know him so well and the old newspapers we found, and into the arms of the Black Organization of all groups? What would make him want to completely uproot his life and just flat out _vanish _like that?_

"Well I hope we can figure out where he is. We need to help him." Shiori turned to the car's two other occupants. "But first we should probably figure out the meaning behind _that woman's _question. I'm certain that whatever happened or is still going on that changed Saguru so much, that question lies right at the root of it."

_Did you ever wonder why you're so smart? _Eisuke and Jodie both nodded in agreement, though neither had a clue where to even begin thier search for the truth.


	9. Chapter 9

"Oh, Takagi-kun," chided his partner, Detective Sato Miwako, with an indulgent sigh as she entered his small office to find Detective Takagi Wataru poring over what she simply referred to with mental scorn as That File once more, "not that file from Osaka again. You've been beating yourself up with that thing for far too much of your time."

His strange obsession had begun two or three months ago, after Takagi had come back from being temporarily assigned to work with some detectives down in Osaka in order to help puzzle out the pieces of a seemingly invulnerable large, complex drug-smuggling ring. The police had finally been able to make some headway into investigating the group when one of the cartel's mules had wound up shot to death in a back alley of Tokyo and the gunman involved was successfully apprehended- exactly the sort of break that they had been hoping would come their way for months. After the investigation had been fully finished, Takagi had returned from his temporary office down in Osaka with a large, yellow, very beat up looking expandable folder that Sato certainly didn't remember him leaving with.

Since the day that he had returned to Tokyo with a determined, bloodhound look on his face and that old file tucked haphazardly under his arm, any time that they weren't busy investigating a murder or major crime (or filing and filling out the mounds of paperwork involved in both of the above activities) Takagi was holed up in his office poring over whatever its contents were, and Sato had decided it was about time that she got to the bottom of what was going on. "They're not even in our jurisdiction," she continued before realizing in a burst of slight annoyance that Takagi hadn't even looked up from the papers that he had laid out on his desk from that silly, ridiculous yellow folder since she had entered his office. "Are you listening to me?"

"I know they're not in our jurisdiction, Sato-san," he replied, finally looking away from the papers and meeting Sato's eyes with a gaze that was a full of caution as it was humor. "But I was...well, I was asked to look into this in my free time. One of the detectives I worked with down there asked me to before I left, and I agreed once he told me what was going on." He hunched his shoulders almost as if withdrawing into himself before resuming his intent study of the papers before him.

Now Sato's detective instincts were stirring, and the quiet, guarded wariness of Takagi's tone only made her curiosity more fully piqued. "OK, Takagi-kun, spill it," she said in a joshing tone while grabbing a seat and placing herself next to him. "I've been wondering about what's going on every time I see you with your nose in that file since you've brought it back with you from Osaka. If you can't trust your partner with information, then who can you trust?"

Takagi studied her seriously for a few moments before smiling at her. Sato felt a light blush rise to her cheeks before she took a few shallow, controlled breaths and reminding herself that they were _at work_. "Close the door," he then stated firmly, surprising Sato out of her boosted mood because he sounded so serious- and a bit scared. She complied with his request and then sat back down, sipping at her coffee while offering a cup to Takagi as well, who took it with a grateful expression. "Alright, Sato-san. I'll tell you what I know, and let you look at this. I've come to call it the Ghost Boy file lately," he added in a tone full of dark humor. "A teenage boy who seems to have simply vanished off the face of the Earth."

"Vanished off the face of the Earth?" Sato asked a few moments later after a few, cocking an eyebrow. "How exactly do you mean?"

"I mean just that- vanished completely without a trace," he replied as he pulled out a piece of paper that looked like a rough, handwritten report to be typed up into a formal incident report later, Sato spotting the familiar shorthand and jargon that police tended to use to avoid hand cramps all through the three or four paragraphs. The sheet of yellow notebook paper also looked rather wrinkled and aged, and there was a coffee ring in its upper right corner that looked very, very old. "And what's even more interesting to me is that this piece of paper here is the closest thing that was ever filed to a missing persons report."

"Why don't you start from the beginning- how you got this handed to you in the first place?"

"Well, as I'm sure you've guessed by now, I got this from a detective down there in Osaka- Goro Otaki, who was apparently good friends with the detective boy that vanished, Hattori Heiji," explained Takagi in between sips of coffee. "He took this statement here from Hattori's mother. And Goro had it all ready to go to file the report until the order came down to not bother filing a report." Takagi then gave Sato a pointed glance before adding "An order that came down directly from the boy's father, Hattori Heizo, the chief of police there."

"You're telling me the boy's own father prevented a missing persons report from being filed?" asked Satou in an incredulous tone as she stared at Takagi, feeling completely dumbfounded. _What on Earth-?_

"Yeah. Strange, very strange," nodded Takagi. "But since Goro had known the kid and felt like there was something very weird going on, he tried to launch his own investigation on his own time. He worked for a couple of months and thought he was beginning to get somewhere when his supervisor called him on the carpet and told him in no uncertain terms that if he continued to 'poke around', quote end quote, about Hattori Heiji's disappearance that there would be Unhappy People In High Places, so he had to back down." He gave her a conspiratorial glance; both were in the bureaucracy-laden police force and therefore knew exactly what Unhappy People In High Places meant.

"And he couldn't ask anyone at his office because he was worried that they'd turn right around and go to the supervisor who told him to quit poking around," muttered Sato thoughtfully. "Which is where you came in, I suppose."

"Exactly," replied Takagi as he touched the tip of his nose lightly, a gesture the department sometimes used with each other to indicate that someone had 'hit it on the nose.' "The day that I got assigned down there temporarily, Goro approached me and asked me to take a look because he didn't want to place anyone's neck in his department on the line." He got up out of his seat to stretch while adding "It was the last thing he said to me that finally got me to say yes. He looked right at me with this fierce expression and said 'It's not right when a boy's own father won't go looking for him. _Someone_ has to help him.'

* * *

"Agasa-hakase, who is this person?"

Shiho asked the question while holding up a lone, very old-seeming Post-It that held the name 'Amano Achika' on it in what Shiho had instantly recognized as the professor's large, somewhat sloppy handwriting. She hoped that he would be willing to finally break his silence on what was keeping him secluded in that room all day every day after she had found the Post-It under the large, spotless table, where it had floated under and gotten slightly stuck under one of the wheels- the only piece of paper she had been able to find at all in the room, and a piece that she suspected had only not been picked up due to being half-hidden. The Professor's reaction to seeing the piece of paper told her that her hunch was correct.

"Where did you find that?" he asked in a near-whisper. "No, wait, I know where you've found it. But how?"

"I decided it had become necessary to drag the truth out of you, and took the needed steps in preparation to do so," Shiho replied unrepentantly as she handed the note to him. "Don't think I haven't already made copies of the note and written down the name. I've been in that empty room, and found that note. Now talk."

"I-I can't. I'm sorry, Miyano-san. I just can't." Agasa's eyes widened and his hand went to his mouth as he realized that he'd spoken her true family name aloud, and Shiho leveled a glare at him before sitting down across from him.

"Who is that person? What connection do they have with Kudo-kun's disappearance?"

"He hasn't disappeared, for the hundredth time," snapped Agasa, and Shiho could tell that he was grabbing at the opportunity to get angry desperately, as if it was a lifeline. "He calls Ran at least once a week, most weeks twice, and his parents just as frequently if not more. All he did was-"

"Suddenly and completely uproot himself to go to Europe with next to no warning," responded Shiho in an equally vehement tone. "He was with Ran-san and Mouri-tantei one evening, then he suddenly vanished in the middle of the night and didn't call until the next day, when he was already on a plane bound for Germany and merely asking for his clothes to be sent. It was lucky he left that note explaining at least that much or Ran-san probably would have had a heart attack from worry. And then you got that phonecall later that day, went white as a ghost and have secluded yourself down in that room ever since."

"Yes, speaking of that room, how did you get into it?" asked Agasa.

"None of your business." Shiho was not about to disclose that she possessed a second key that would permit her into the room, though she was sure that Agasa would realize this fact sooner or later and change the locks. She hoped that she would be able to finish her investigation of the strangely empty second room before that realization on his part occurred.

"Then what I'm doing in there is none of yours," retorted Agasa in a similar venom-filled tone. "There's a reason I have that room locked up, and I really don't want to go into it." Suddenly, all the fight went out of him as he slumped down and held his head in his hands. "Go to your room for a bit. Please." This was asked in such a pitiful tone that it melted even Shiho's iron resolve to get to the truth, and so she reluctantly got up and headed to her room. As soon as she finished leaving, Agasa walked down the stairs and into the laboratory. He then took his key out and entered the secret room.

"I guess I'd better leave some more crumbs for you to follow," he murmured to himself as he started expertly removing false bottoms from apparently empty file drawers and began taking out stacks of neatly organized manila file folders. "Achika-san is a good start but that will only get you so far." He began flipping through the folders, deciding what would be enough without completely tipping Shiho's hand to the fact that he had deliberately left a trail for her to pick up. "It's about time someone started asking questions. And about time responsibility was taken."


	10. Chapter 10

Amano Achika, his birth mother.

Well, having just her name wasn't much to help begin his research into the possibility of the existence of a twin brother with, but it was something to start out with and certainly far better than nothing at all. Kuroba Kaito (born as Amano Akugi, he'd learned upon examining the old certificate before carefully tucking it back into his breast pocket) was currently busying himself by digging around the newspaper archives of his small local library, trying to see if he could find any scrap or trace of Amano Achika beyond her name typed onto his birth certificate in the 'Mother' slot by a slightly crooked typewriter that also seemed to have held the paper in at an angle (gah, _focus _- those stupid details weren't important right now.) He had already tried calling the hospital and asking for them to search of their records to see if a second birth certificate with Achika's name as the mother possibly existed from that day, June 21st, but very quickly learned that they were highly unwilling to part with any of that sort of information over the telephone.

The 'Father' field of the birth certificate was strangely, noticeably blank and it had made Kaito wonder about what exactly happened between his birth mother and his biological father when he first realized that the name was absent. Kaito hazarded a wild guess that there was some sad sob story of some sort that lay behind that blank name and the fact that he- and his twin brother, if he existed- was (or were, again if he truly had a twin) given up for adoption while their birth mother vanished. He was hoping that he could find at least most of the parts of that story without having to enlist the aid of a detective. Or, just maybe it was as absurdly, tragically simple an explanation as Achika not having had any idea of who the father was and deciding after enduring the pregnancy that she simply couldn't either emotionally or physically handle raising him (or possibly them) on her own.

He'd spent the last couple hours of his day off in deep frustration. Kaito was_ really_ supposed to be spending this non-school day looking into the specifics of his next heist's Saturday night/Sunday morning security detail while he 'worked' as a janitor on the mansion's premises, but he had felt that this current search was more important so Kaito had sent Jii to scope it out instead, and Kaito was still having no luck in the more current newspapers. Kaito then decided that it was time to try and search the vast seas of microfilmed papers the library possessed- perhaps there'd be a birth announcement or something- and got up to go to the computer that let you search for microfilms to be pulled for closer inspection.

He started simply enough- a search for Amano Achika's name using the same kanji she used when she had signed her name below that crooked printed name, hopeful that the name wouldn't be too terribly common and that he would find _something_. The computer responded by eventually pulling up a rather long list of articles that gave him a most excellent reason why he'd been put up for adoption, at least if this was the Amano Achika who had given birth to him seventeen years ago. His eyes slowly widened as he skimmed the headlines from sixteen years ago, Kaito's near-perfect eidetic memory burning them indelibly into his mind as they crawled by on the screen.

**POLICEWOMAN, 26, BRUTALLY SLAIN IN HER OWN HOME**

**MURDER OF POLICEWOMAN PROMPTS SECURITY FEARS**

**POLICE FORCE VOWS TO FIND AMANO ACHIKA'S KILLER**

**SLAIN POLICEWOMAN'S FAMILY CREATES REWARD FUND**

**A WEEK LATER, POLICE STILL LEADLESS IN FEMALE COP MURDER**

Wanting to absolutely confirm beyond a shadow of a doubt that this was the Amano Achika he was searching for- _Could it _possibly_ be that easy? Have I really found her this quickly? _- Kaito began to scroll through to see if there were any pictures of the slain policewoman on any of the microfilmed papers; he hoped there would be a strong enough family resemblance to be able to tell for sure. Since the listings in the engine were all text and consisted of the headline and summary only, it was a very difficult thing to tell without actually getting all of the microfilms and painstakingly going through them one by one. That would take time that Kaito really didn't have because he had a huge school project due in two days that he'd been expertly procrastinating on since his class had received it, and he would need at least four or five hours this evening to put something together that he'd actually get a passing grade on.

Just then, his phone rang, and it was the tone he'd assigned to Jii. _Probably calling in the report on their setup at the mansion. We've got the internal security figured out, but it's the stupid external patrols that we need to nail down. There's no evident rhyme or reason to their shift changes and they seem to change way too frequently..._ He answered the cell with a simple "Hello, this is Kaito", his code for letting Jii know that he could deliver the report and they could discuss Kaitou Kid matters openly. If Kaito hadn't been alone in the room, he'd been afraid of being listened in on or in some other position where such a chat was inadvisable, he would have instead answered with "Hello, Kuroba speaking."

"Hey, I think I finally have those damn security patrol changes they do outside almost figured out at last," replied Jii without preamble in a single excited breath before inhaling deeply. "It seems like they rotate who goes on what assignment based on their last name, and their routes are based on kanji symbols for various animals like monkeys and tigers- I've written down the kanjis, now we just need to figure out the correlation between the last name and kanji assignment so we can slip in through a gap while they're rotating their men." After not getting a reply from the thief for several seconds due to Kaito's intent study of the monitor in front of him, Jii asked "Are you alright? Did you hear what I said?" If Kaito remained silent for more than four or five seconds after that inquiry, Jii would immediately terminate the call.

"Yeah, sorry. I heard you, and we can still talk. Just busy researching an old murder while we're talking and got caught up in it," Kaito replied in what was a vast understatement. "Sixteen years ago, Amano Achika, a policewoman was killed. I've been researching the case."

"Oh? Why are you looking into _that_ when we're right in the middle of planning a heist?" There was a brief pause on the other end. "You know, I remember that case very, very well now that I think about it. It was so brutal, and so strange. They never even arrested a suspect for it either if I recall correctly," he sighed sadly. "That was a tough one, all over everyplace. The media gobbled it up and wouldn't leave the police alone."

"Do you remember if they mentioned any children of hers on the news? Or whether she had any children that were staying with relatives or something?"

"Nope, not that I ever saw, no kids were mentioned if memory serves. And that might be for the best; that murder was tragic enough without some child or children going through life without a mother though I know that I don't have to say what it's like going through life missing a parent to you." Another pause; this was about the extent that they were comfortable getting into Kaito's life on an unsecured phone while they were also discussing heist details in the same conversation. "Why are you asking? Did you hear something or see something about her murder that made you wonder about it?"

"Umm, you could say that, yeah." Kaito didn't feel like going into the fact that there was a chance she was his biological mother before he had something more substantial to back him up than merely a name that matched the one on the birth certificate. Well, that and the fact that he was basically doing this search because some random lady had mentioned something about a boy who looked a great deal like him that she'd encountered in Germany. "Just something that piqued my interest, that's all." He shifted slightly in the seat, the noise reverberating throughout the empty research room. "We'll meet at your place tomorrow and go over those plans, OK?" he continued, modulating his voice a bit after he realized just how loud he was. "I'd like to schedule the heist in the next week or two, full moon is in two and a half weeks and I prefer the full moon for my inspections as you know."

"Alright. Be careful, we'll meet tomorrow." A strange pause was then followed by "Don't bite off more than you can chew, alright?" With that, Jii ended the call while Kaito knitted his eyebrows together momentarily. _Don't bite off more than you can chew? He's never used that phrase with me before in his life...what the heck is he even talking about? _

"K-K-Kudo-kun?" came a whispered voice that was packed with shock, awe and fear from somewhere to his left, a small female child's voice if his ear was any decent judge (and it was, thank you very much.) He tore himself away from the microfilm summaries that he was perusing in an attempt to find ones that would likely have Achika's picture in them and turned towards where the voice had come from. He quickly found that the voice did indeed belong to a girl, a small blonde-haired one of roughly six to eight years of age with light blue eyes who was staring at him with a completely pale, shell-shocked face like she'd just seen a ghost or something. She had one hand curled around a small backpack strap, that small hand currently shaking slightly. "I-is that really you?" she finally got out in a hushed, slightly more firm tone after the two started at each other for a few more moments.

"Huh? Who's Kudo?" he asked as he got up from the seat and approached the girl. "My name's Kuroba. Kuroba Kaito."

The girl suddenly went from shell-shocked to withdrawn as she continued to study his face, like she had suddenly realized that he wasn't this Kudo person. _Wait a minute...could she be referring to Kudo _Shinichi_? That meitantei who somehow wound up getting shrunk back to a kid who looks very, very much like me? I better play dumb about knowing him though. Kaitou Kid knows him, but Kuroba Kaito has no clue..._

"No one you need to be concerned with. I'm sorry for wasting your time," replied the girl in a strange monotone as she looked up at him with a hard glint in her eyes as she pulled out a folded up small, old-looking Post-It from her jeans pocket and headed over to the seat he'd just vacated. After the girl sat down at the seat and blinked twice while taking the contents of the screen in, she turned back to him with that same shocked expression she'd worn earlier. That shock, however, quickly turned to a look of furious concentration as she continued to study him; he got the distinct feeling that he was being sized up or evaluated- but for what he had no idea. "I didn't mean to take your seat. You can have it back until you're finished." She looked up at him with a strange look that lay somewhere between fear and puzzlement as she brushed by him and exited the research room.

_Now that was one of the weirdest little girls I've ever come across. Wonder what the deal was. Oh well, none of my business...she didn't seem very talkative once she realized I wasn't who she thought I was anyhow. _Kaito sat back down at the computer and picked a couple of the articles that he thought held the most chance of having a picture of the slain officer in them and headed to the research desk to check them out.

Ten minutes later, something in his gut told him that Kaito had, indeed, found his brutally murdered biological mother. Her face...Her face and hair colors both, it was like looking into a mirror that gave the looker slightly more feminine features and long flowing, luxurious deep brown hair. But the shape and contours of her face, the very subtle sloping shape of those deep blue eyes...the tiniest of bumps in her nose at the bridge..._I've found her. _He continued to study that face, somehow absolutely knowing that this was indeed her.

"Excuse me." Kaito blinked as that strange girl's voice entered his ear. He glanced up at the clock and realized that nearly another hour and a half had passed; it hadn't felt like more than five since his heart had temporarily stopped upon first pulling up the photo of Amane Achika in her police uniform.

"Hmm? What?" he asked as he looked down at the strange girl, half-distracted. _Who killed her? And why? _

"I would like you to meet someone out in the main library who's waiting for you." This was said in that same strange, flat tone this girl always seemed to use.

"And why would I do that? Do I even know-"

"I think you may find that we have some common goals." _Why does this girl seem so much older than she looks when she talks...?_

"What are you talking about?"

She didn't reply, but held up the Post-It note he'd seen her pull out of her pocket when she'd first entered the room. She then slowly unfolded it and let Kaito see the writing on it- his mother's name, in the correct kanji even.


	11. Chapter 11

Review pretty please! Thanks for the encouragement.

* * *

"Jodie-san, do you suppose it was smart to mention the Black Organization to Minawa-san at _all_? Even though all you said was their name?" inquired Eisuke as the pair pulled away from Minawa Shiori's apartment complex in the rental car, their destination now Eisuke's hotel that was a few miles away. "I mean, I know that the boy Hakuba Saguru that she was looking for got sucked in by them, but was that really such a good idea?"

"I don't know how to answer that, Eisuke. I probably _shouldn't_ have said anything looking back on it. That was stupid and probably put her in danger to boot." Jodie chewed a bit on her thumbnail for a moment- a habit that showed up when she was in deep thought that she was trying very hard to break herself of- before realizing what she was doing and quickly returning both hands to the steering wheel. "Dammit." She let out a depressed sigh. "I suppose that just telling her to watch her back probably would have sufficed...but I guess I also wanted her to realize just what he's somehow gotten himself into and how difficult it will be to get him out if she even tries. Well, tough to get him out _alive_ at least." Neither needed or wanted to mention the dead bodies the Organization tended to leave behind once it was discovered that someone wanted out.

"That's the strangest thing about this whole thing to me when I think about it." Eisuke crossed his arms and looked down at the car's floor. "I mean, he was -_is_- the police commissioner's son and also a very good detective, at least from what we read in the newspapers and heard from Minawa-san. What would make someone just completely stop doing something that they love so much like that to run to the Black Organization and start working for them? And why did the Organization contact him in the first place? What did they want from him?" After he took a breath, he finished with "And what the heck did that lady that visited him mean by that question, 'did you ever wonder why you're so smart'?"

"Well, I think it's just like Shiori said. Figuring out the answer to that will probably at least mostly answer why he dropped his life and joined them," shrugged Jodie as she maneuvered the car onto the freeway. "The other fact she mentioned that I find very interesting is the fact that his father, at least, seems to know exactly why he left but wouldn't say anything or even file a missing persons report. What reason would his father have for refusing to file a report like that on his own son? It's like Alice going down the rabbit hole, curiouser and curiouser."

"He doesn't seem to be the only one that joined them, either, at least if we look at that note that nee-chan sent with that picture," muttered Eisuke. "Remember it had those three different things written on it? Those drink mixer names that are probably code names? And the word missing?"

"The missing notation...That makes perfect sense, Eisuke," realized Jodie as her mind began furiously turning. _Could it be that not just he joined them nine months ago? Are there two others like him that went to the Black Organization willingly- for whatever reasons they had?_

Just then, Jodie's cellphone rang. Seeing that it was Shiori, Jodie picked up and wondered what she needed. _We just got done talking five minutes ago... _"Hello?"

"Sorry for calling after we just got done, but I just remembered something and wanted to tell you before I forgot. It was a strange conversation between Saguru-botchama and I, one of the last we had before he vanished. I didn't think much of it at the time, I figured maybe he was reading a book for a report or something, but I very much wonder about it now..."

* * *

_"Shiori, do you think that freedom to choose is always that?"_

_"What was that question again, botchama?" Shiori found herself thoroughly puzzled, wondering where that philosophical question had come from. _

_"Nothing." He waved her off with a familiar flip of his hand as he continued to stare out the large living room window and sip his tea. "Forget I even asked."_

_"Well it looks like it's weighing on your mind. Is there something going on at school or something? You know you can tell me in confidence." Shiori was fairly certain that this was another one of those moods of his lately, the outward symptoms either a strange depression or melancholy sadness that she'd been seeing in Saguru with increasing frequency since _that woman _had come to visit three weeks ago._

_"Mmm, no. It hasn't got anything at all to do with school."_

_"Then what is it?" Shiori moved slightly closer to Saguru as she continued the weekly dusting. Deciding that enough was enough of these bouts of depression on Saguru's part, she finally felt that the time had come to vent her frustrations and fears about how much in so many little ways he'd changed since that strange spur of the moment visit. "You know, you really haven't been acting like yourself at all since that woman came to visit you three weeks ago..."_

_"How much did you hear?" His tone was neutral, but Shiori didn't miss the sudden wariness in his eyes even though he wasn't making eye contact with her. Shiori quickly decided to lie and hope that she could try and draw some more information out of him about the strange question Saguru had opened the conversation with - a question she had a feeling that had its beginnings in that strange meeting._

_"I didn't hear anything, botchama. I was outside of the room and busy working, remember? The only time I came back in was to refill your tea."_

_"Good. Let's keep it that way."_

* * *

"So you're trying to tell me that Kudo Shinichi, who vanished without a trace about nine and a half months ago, is my brother? Not _just_ a brother, but my _twin_?"

Kuroba Kaito stared at the DNA analysis sheets in front of him that provided the final, undeniable evidence of a blood relationship between himself and the vanished-without-a-trace so long ago Shinichi Kudo a few hours after he had provided a couple of vials of blood for analysis purposes at Agasa-hakase's house, still feeling a bit faint while he was processing the news that he did, indeed, have a twin but also feeling incredibly slow and stupid at the same time. _How the hell did I not see it before now or at least think of the possibility sooner in all this time? I've known I was adopted from the time I was little! How many times did I find myself idly wondering about how very much Kudo looked like me at my heists way back before whatever happened to shrink him happened? And even after he shrunk and started tailing me again, how damn much he looked like me _still _even as a little kid? I am the biggest moron in the world..._

But he was now a self-proclaimed moron with a newly discovered meitantei twin brother...a twin brother that had suddenly, strangely vanished nine and a half months ago. _Wait a minute...wasn't that about the same time that Hakuba suddenly disappeared too? No, this is no time to focus on that jerk...I have to find my brother._

"Yes. Unfortunately, we have no idea where is is now." Agasa said this in a sad tone. "We don't have a clue about what happened to him, but one morning we all woke up and he had already taken off on a plane bound for Germany. He left a long note for Mouri Ran, a girl that he was very close to, but that was about it until two or three months after he'd vanished. Then he suddenly started calling Ran and his parents very regularly, at least once or twice a week, always from some foreign country. If he's even set foot in Japan since he took off I'd be shocked."

"Do you have any idea why my brother"- _What a weird phrase, still doesn't sound quite right but it's the undeniable truth _- "took off like that? I mean there must have been _something _that shook him up enough to do that. Something big."

"I have no idea" replied Agasa quickly in a mumble while staring down at the floor. _Please don't let him persist, please don't let him persist...I should never have let Shiho talk me into doing this DNA analysis when she ran into this boy...even though I knew as soon as she described him and the fact that he'd somehow stumbled onto Achika-san that he had to be Akugi looking for his family...family that..._

"You're the worst liar I've ever met," Kaito said with a half-grin as he poked Agasa gently in the gut. "That wasn't even a serious attempt." He then glanced over at Haibara Ai, the strange little girl who had first taken him to the library to meet Agasa-hakase before the three had traveled back to Agasa's house after Kaito called his mom to let her know he was alright. Ai was busy studying the professor with the most intense, adult-looking scrutiny that Kaito had about ever seen. _She's so strange...she seems so much more mature than her age indicates..._Suddenly, his twin brother's bizarre fate sprung into his head. _No freaking way! Could it possibly be that she, too...? No, not going to pry. If she wants to say anything about it, she'll say it eventually. Right now I have to find my brother, Shinichi, and I have to find him as quickly as possible. And Agasa-hakase _definitely_ knows something..._

"All I can tell you is what you already know- that he took off to Germany." Agasa frowned as he cupped his hand under his chin. "But what that woman told you...she said he looked just like you. Which means that..." he drifted off as he gave Ai a pointed look and then reined himself in; he had very nearly been ready to let 'the effects of the apotoxin were somehow reversed' come out of his mouth in front of Akugi - _Kaito, not Akugi! KAITO! I'm so sorry, Achika- _and that wouldn't be advisable, at least not as long as Shiho wanted Shinichi's twin kept in the dark about her true nature. Luckily, it was much easier to think of Shinichi as just Shinichi and not Aritei, his birth name, since Agasa had called him by the name the Kudos had given him for so very long- well, until he'd taken on the pseudonym of Edogawa Conan, but that was a whole other matter.

_Please Hiroshi-san...you have to help..._

"Which means what? Look, anything that can help find my brother is a good thing."

Agasa gulped nervously before looking down at Shiho, then over to Kaito. "Well," he finally managed to get out timidly, "I may have somewhat of a general idea, maybe, but you won't like it very much." _OK, I have an exact idea, but should you really be exposed to _them _any more than you already have been in your life as Kuroba Kaito?_

"Start talking" replied Kaito firmly, with a serious a face as Agasa had ever seen.

"Well, if he was seen in Germany, then maybe you should check newspapers from there?" Agasa was completely torn in half at the moment between spilling his guts so Akugi - _Kaito! _- could find his brother and preserving a vow he had made to a dying woman sixteen years ago, and the two sides were still fighting a bitter war within him that he was waiting to finish.

"I don't think that that was what you were initially going to say at all," snapped Kaito in reply as his eyes narrowed. _Oh, he knows something about where my brother is alright. And I'll worm it out of him if it's the last thing I do._


	12. Chapter 12

Here we go!

* * *

_Alright Kudo-kun. You and now at least one other boy -another meitantei who is very nearly your age, strangely enough- vanished nine and a half months ago with no forewarning and no apparent reason for it. And both of you also relocated to European countries as well after you left Japan so suddenly; I somehow doubt that fact is just attributable to mere happenstance or coincidence. You went to Germany supposedly to attend a 'special boarding school' according to the phone call you placed with your parents and the other meitantei, Hakuba Saguru, purportedly went over to France as a business consultant of some sort for a nameless company from what Hakuba-kun said in the letter Koizumi Akako received from him last week. But that very same letter also seemed to imply that he's in some sort of danger...are you in the same peril? Were you two perhaps even sucked in by the same people or group? Where are you currently? What's going on? Why did either of you even _truly_ leave in the first place?_

Shiho also _really_ didn't like the fact that her (admittedly somewhat dulled by this point, though she was deeply loathe to concede the fact) survival instinct she had long ago dubbed her 'Black Organization radar' was faintly but rather insistently blipping in the back of her mind as she secretly, furtively attempted to actually put down on paper for the first time what their now growing group had discussed and theorized so far. She and Agasa-hakase had met one of Kuroba Kaito's classmates, Koizumi Akako, when the magician had shown up at their doorstep yesterday afternoon with the beautiful raven-haired girl rather reluctantly in tow, Kuroba-kun having explained that they might want to listen to her story and didn't it sound _awfully_ familiar?

The whole thing that they'd managed to uncover and piece together so far, from how quickly and quietly the boys had left to how completely hush-hush that both boys were being about their present locations or dealings, practically screamed of the Organization's dark machinations even though there was no definitive proof-yet. Plus, now that she really thought about it, why would Kudo-kun willingly go to the very organization that had tried to kill him and also ruined his life by forcing him to become Edogawa Conan? Despite what Koizumi-san had said yesterday, the two boys that they knew of, at least, had rather clearly left of their own free will.

_Wherever they are right now, I'm certain that they're not there by their own choice. _

The exceedingly strange girl had refused to explain the exact reasons for or evidence she had backing that statement when pressed by the other three in the room after she'd said it in that firm tone, but Shiho had enough confidence in her ability to read people to know that Koizumi-san had been telling the truth, or rather she should probably say that the other girl at least believed very firmly that what she was espousing was the truth. Kuroba-kun also seemed to be more than willing to take the girl at her word, most likely due to her being his classmate although Shiho still wasn't quite sure yet how much trust she was willing to place in either Koizumi-san _or_ the newly discovered twin brother of Kudo-kun. She had quite honestly wondered whether it was a hoax or perhaps simply her eyes playing tricks on her when she had first laid eyes on him, however a) DNA tests that she herself performed didn't lie and b) Agasa-hakase's reaction to seeing Kuroba-kun, as well as the hakase calling him by the name imprinted on the boy's birth certificate before he had ever laid eyes on said certificate both seemed to settle the matter, as did the additional fact that she had first stumbled across the boy in the midst of his searching for Amane Achika.

"Hey Ai-chan! What are you doing over here? Did we get a mystery in the shoe at lunch?" Ayumi approached the bench on the playground where Shiho was currently sitting with a perky bounce in her step, the possibility of a mystery seeming to have lifted her spirits quite a bit. Shiho thought sometimes that only the mysteries they were occasionally asked to solve by their classmates or teachers had kept the young girl's spirits aloft since the time of Kudo-kun's sudden departure; of the Shonen Tanteidan Ayumi had been by far the hardest hit emotionally thanks to the rather obvious crush that she had developed on him during the meitantei's time at the school and in their class in the guise of Edogawa Conan. _Of course, if we can put any stock in what that woman who accosted him a few days ago said to Kuroba-kun, it sounds like Kudo-kun managed to get the apotoxin permanently reversed somehow..._That was another part of the puzzle that needed to be figured out.

"No, there was nothing in the shoe today for us to investigate unfortunately." Shiho poked the paper in front of her that she'd been writing on as Ayumi's face fell, realizing that the young girl was patiently expecting an answer. Shiho decided to reply with honesty. "I was trying to figure out where exactly in Germany Conan went to when he left for that special academy, actually. Maybe find an address or something along those lines so we could write to him." Shiho realized with a mild, belated jolt that she had come dangerously close just then to slipping up and saying 'Kudo-kun' instead of Conan, more than likely the result of her not having even had to _think _of the boy's moniker that he'd adopted in so long. _I wonder if he's stayed in contact with Mouri Ran since the move and writing her that long letter. That might be a good avenue of investigation as well, if the subject isn't too painful to bring up. Perhaps he's dropped some hints to her about where he is._

"YOU MEAN YOU'RE TRYING TO FIGURE OUT WHERE CONAN WENT AND YOU DIDN'T TELL US YOU THAT WERE LOOKING FOR HIM!?" Shiho actually jumped out of her seat slightly in surprise, her mental train of thought utterly derailed and left crushed in a smoldering heap as three completely familiar and rather loud voices rang out in perfect unison around her on the bench, Ayumi's from the front, Genta's from her left and Mitsuhiko's from her right. All of them had changed in some slight way over the nine-month stretch of time, becoming at least somewhat taller and in Mitsuhiko's case even just a bit on the lanky side, but they still did bear a very strong resemblance to the investigative team that Kudo-kun had so capriciously abandoned, at least in Shiho's opinion. In fact, they still found themselves mixed up in the occasional crime; though their solve rate had slipped slightly with the shrunken meitantei's absence they were still very much respected as witnesses and assistants by Takagi-keiji and Satou-keiji.

"Well, I wanted to wait until I had a bit more evidence to bring you guys into the investigation, but I'm working with someone to try and find him, yes. Just knowing he's in Germany isn't quite enough to send a letter, after all."

* * *

Later that evening...

* * *

"I'll be right back, Mom. Sorry to interrupt our dinner, but this is really close to when Shinichi normally calls and I don't want to miss it because he almost never picks up his darn phone when _I_ try to call _him_." With that, Ran walked out onto the porch to await one of the weekly phone calls from the meitantei that had become her lifeline since the little boy that had been staying with her and her father, Conan, had so suddenly and strangely followed his parents to Germany.

There were times that Kisaki Eri found herself ruefully admiring her daughter's patience with Shinichi, her willingly waiting so diligently and happily for phone calls or the occasional packages that made her glow with happiness from a boy that she had only gotten to actually _see_ face to face a few times over the past few years. Of course, Kudo Shinichi was just a _little_ different from Mouri Kogoro and perhaps he was actually worth more than a minimal effort -Eri hoped so for her daughter's sake- but that wasn't a subject that Eri was going to allow herself to dwell on and thereby ruin her bimonthly dinner with her daughter. She instead put her dinner fork down as she found her mind wandering more fully to the subject of Kudo Shinichi, neé Amano Aritei, the strangely intelligent boy that her friends Kudo Yusaku and Kudo Yukiko had adopted when he had been about six and a half months old.

Of course, she'd never brought up the fact that he was adopted to Shinichi himself as per his adoptive parent's rather explicit instructions on the matter, but the pair had visited their mutual friend who had been nearly done finishing with the studying involved to be a lawyer back then to see if she thought that the adoption paperwork was in proper legal order. With the father either unknown or deliberately left unlisted by his birth mother Amano Achika and that same mother having been rather cruelly murdered, there really hadn't seemed to be much standing in the way of the adoption unless some other family came forward and Eri had let them know that. When no family had seemed to be coming forward the adoption had gone forward without a hitch when he had been about a year old and his name was legally changed to Kudo Shinichi.

Eri sometimes wondered if she should ever have discussed with the Kudos (out of Shinichi's earshot, of course) the rather unusual incident with the books and paper that she'd witnessed over their shoulders when he and Ran had been playing together back when the pair had both been roughly two years old. Of course, Kogoro had seen it too since he'd been seated on the same love seat as Eri but he said later when she'd asked that it hadn't seemed out of the ordinary to him. Eri, however, knew exactly what she had seen and that it was not anything that could be termed ordinary at all: a boy of no more than two and a half quite deliberately and purposefully looking at a page in a book, then turning to a piece of paper and carefully spelling out the words in the book onto that paper using a pencil that he had his fist balled around.

_Do me a big favor and forgot that you ever saw that, eh? They don't need to know, alright?_

Her wondering about the strange incident had only been heightened when the Kudos' neighbor who'd also been visiting at the time of their visit for a dinner party...Agasa, was that his family name? had approached her later after realizing what she had seen and begged the favor of her to not ever discuss what she'd seen with the Kudos or ask about the incident. She had later very carefully snuck a peek at the papers Shinichi had scribbled on only to find that they hadn't been random scribbling, but eerily accurate portrayals of katakana, hiragana and even some basic kanji. That fact, combined with her friends telling her that Agasa had been the one who had initially approached them about adopting Aritei/Shinichi, only increased both her puzzlement and concern about what exactly was going on with him_. What sort of child not only begins to _read_ but also _write_ at two and a half years old? _Something about it had seemed highly unnatural to her at the time, and looking back on the event now it still unsettled her a great deal.

And then of course, now that she was musing on the subject while Ran chatted away on the phone, there were also the _other_ two boys approximately Shinichi's age that had seemed to take bizarrely, creepily similar paths in life to Shinichi's own, becoming very well-renowned meitanteis with nearly perfect solve rates at mind-bogglingly young ages. The three meitantei had turned into the main topic of discussion at more than one lawyer's convention she'd attended over the past few years, since one maxim was pounded into your skull from the beginning in the defense attorney's realm at least: _If you're a lawyer worth your salt, make sure you know at least one detective that's worth theirs._

Even if they'd had to face the arduous, nearly impossible task of attempting to trip up one of the boys during cross-examination at a trial, the lawyers also held a deep respect and admiration for the trio, particularly if they were working for their client instead of against them. And the problem that the attorneys were currently facing was that none of them had been able to contact any of the three boys in going on nine and a half months now. There had even been quiet talk amongst the barristers of setting up a reward fund of some sort for information on their whereabouts at the most recent convention she'd attended in downtown Tokyo last month since it seemed like the police and prosecutor's offices had little to no interest in what had happened to Kudo Shinichi, Hakuba Saguru and Hattori Heiji.

_Well...While she's busy on the phone with him...I wonder... _Eri reached over and picked up her desk phone, dialing a cell phone number that she had committed to memory.

"Hey Yukiko, it's Eri." A brief pause. "Doing very well, thanks. Do you happen to have the number for that hakase friend of yours handy? The ojisan living a couple doors down from you? I just had some...technical questions for him on a case I'm working and I'm hoping he'll be able to assist me as an expert witness." Yukiko provided the number after asking Yusaku for it, which Eri hastily scribbled down before Ran reentered the room with a very happy look on her face. "Thanks so much, I have to go now; this is one of my dinner nights with Ran. Talk to you later."


	13. Chapter 13

Dedicated to The Shang Kudarung for all of her lovely, encouraging reviews. Also, long PM is very very long, and yes I read _all_ of it. ;)

* * *

He, of the three of them, had been far and away the most qualified back then to spot one of the Black Organization's carefully laid nets in the underbrush and therefore should have been able to avoid stepping on the intricately weaved snare. However, this last six and a half months since he had fully recovered from flitting in and out of a coma had been an endless, horrid self-deflating and highly depressing string of should-haves, could-haves, would-haves and needed-to-do-back-thens. On the exceedingly rare occasion that they actually allowed him a few minutes to himself away from his duties for the Organization which he hated with an all-consuming and burning passion, Kudo Shinichi almost always spent the time berating himself and wandering mentally back to the fact that not only _should_ he have realized just what was going on during the night of the bizarre meeting that seemed so long ago now, but he should have alerted the other two as well.

Yet almost totally blinded back nine long months ago by what he would later discover to be stupid, misplaced anger and also fueled by a potent but in reality largely undeserved resentment towards his adoptive parents at the time- as he was very certain the Black Organization's intention had been from the inception of their plan- he had blithely, blissfully and very willingly (at least at that time) walked directly into the trap and thus sprung it along with the other two meitantei, the gallows under their feet so artfully constructed and concealed that he, Hattori and Hakuba had actually been contentedly working for them in various European countries for fairly close to _two months_ before any of the three of them had even begun to pick up the scent of the black-clad rats scurrying busily around them on the periphery. Of course, as the old cliché went, hindsight is always twenty-twenty.

_Kudo, this seem strange to you too? This bank robbery they're reporting here in the Japanese papers...doesn't how it went down sound awfully familiar?_

It had been Hattori Heiji whose gut first twinged with warning seven months ago, and Shinichi could still vividly recall the puzzlement in the former Osakan meitantei's expression during their hastily arranged meeting after the other boy had shown him the newspaper clippings he'd collected regarding what was being described as one of the best-executed and well-oiled bank robberies the Japanese police force had ever seen. And the thing was, Hattori had been absolutely correct. The robbery had been so eerily similar to their response to a 'mock break in scenario' that the corporation employing them had asked the trio to research and write a presentation on that he and Hattori had gone to Hakuba Saguru as soon as they could arrange the meeting, carefully smuggling the article to the arranged location under Heiji's hat.

The half-Brit had eventually rather begrudgingly agreed that perhaps Hattori wasn't just wildly guessing after all and maybe there _was_ something more going on than they knew. The three had agreed after that startling discovery in the newspaper to subtly try and figure out just what was really going on with their employer that did business as Kaishin Corporation, Limited, a decision that Shinichi sometimes wondered if he would go back and change given the opportunity to do so. And as they had begun their careful investigations- or rather what they had very naïvely assumed at the time to be hushed, discreet inquiries conducted without knowledge of their employer- they noticed an abrupt, distinct change in the atmosphere surrounding them.

They had also noticed the fact that the more the three tried to meet face to face so they could try and talk privately about their findings, the more Kaishin Corporation, Limited, seemed to unobtrusively but quite purposefully attempt to keep them apart. And the more that planes suddenly needed servicing or cars suddenly broke down on the days of the scheduled meetings, the more suspicious that the trio became of the company that had hired them on after purportedly stumbling across the real reason why the three of them were so intelligent and so good at detection. All the trio had really wanted was a break from that same detective work and their families, some time to reevaluate a few things- a chance that Kaishin had very providentially dropped right into their laps in the form of becoming the company's 'brain trust' for a few months. Damn it, WHY hadn't he seen that something was seriously off, how completely and strangely convenient that the whole job offer had been?

Things had finally come to a head when the three of them decided to confront Saiyano Yukina, their lone contact with the company to discuss their rather unpleasant findings. (For what felt like the millionth time Shinichi found himself darkly wondering why in the world it had taken not one, not two, but _three_ meitanteis nearly two months to discover that something was afoot with their employer. Her being the only person that they _ever _actually saw face to face should have thrown up all kinds of alarms.) After they spent the better part of an hour and a half asking her about why over the past few days they had discovered at _least_ fifteen to twenty crimes committed during the past two months in several countries whose executions matched almost exactly various security scenario responses that their employer had asked them to dissect and give reports on, she had merely placed her finger to her lips with a strange smile and spoken the final sentence before normalcy was completely (and most likely permanently) torn away from the three of them.

_Oh, that's too bad. I was truly hoping we wouldn't have to strip you of your former identities quite so soon, but I should have known better than that. You _were_ meitanteis after all..._

Yes, he had his teenage body back, but was the price he and the others had paid along with him really worth it? That horrible, hellish two weeks after they'd forcibly fed him the antidote when he had prayed sometimes for the unconsciousness to take him again so the fire all over his body would be extinguished...then finally recovering with his former body restored only to discover that he'd never be permitted in the same room with either Hakuba or Hattori again- well, without armed guards listening in on every word. And they always had to wear the stupid jackets and hoods- Shinichi hadn't actually _seen_ either Hattori or Hakuba's face since the night they'd confronted the woman who had turned out to be Vermouth in disguise, something Shinichi suspected was done to keep them wary of discussing anything but Black Organization business when they met face to face. Of course, who knew if it was _really_ the other former meitanteis under those other large black hoods? Just because he'd spoken face to face a few times with 'Tonic' and 'Bitters' using voice modulators didn't mean that it was his friends he was speaking to.

Weren't the three of them supposed to be geniuses thanks to whatever substance that they'd been injected with when they were infants? So why the _hell_ had none of them felt the noose around their collective necks until it was far too late to leave willingly? Why had he, specifically, not felt the Black Organization's hand behind everything going on until it had all three of them wrapped far too tightly in its icy clutch to ever possibly escape? It almost disgusted Shinichi to think of it now. And who knew if Vermouth was telling anything close to the truth about whatever experiments had supposedly gone on or even if they had gone on at all? Yes the evidence had been presented during that hotel meeting what felt like a century ago, but this was the _Black Organization_; he now knew from direct experience as part of their indentured, captive and highly reluctant brain trust how adept they were at forging evidence (or anything else really) at will if it was needed- or requested of someone paying enough money.

His sanity's saving grace and link to the outside world were the twice-weekly phone calls he was permitted to make on the personal cell phone he still possessed- something in his gut told him Vermouth had arranged the needed permissions for the calls though he often pondered why she had gone to the trouble and what was in it for her. He usually chose to make one phone call to the parents that had raised him, and one to Ran. Of course as far as all three of them were concerned, he was at a private school in Germany and he perpetuated that lie along with doing what the Organization asked of him in order to keep them alive. Edogawa Conan had also left Ran a rather long note the night he'd left detailing how his parents had suddenly decided to take him to America and how much he'd miss her, but he wasn't quite sure if or when he'd be able to get back in touch.

"Quinine, sir. We're at the location."

He hated how deferential that they always were to him. In fact, some of them were flat out brownnosers when they were given the opportunity to speak to such a high-ranking member and it made Shinichi mightily irritated at moments. Ignoring everything else around him and looking down at the ground from under his hood- his standard operating procedure when they actually let him out of his gilded cage and escorted him to and from wherever he was headed against his will- Shinichi continued to stare at the smooth, unstained light colored concrete passing by underneath his feet and wondered if any of the three of them would ever get the opening they needed to escape- well, assuming the other two were still even alive that was. He let out a sigh under his breath, timing it with his bodyguard's gaits so none of them could hear it. After all, he couldn't afford to show any sort of weakness or let the carefully constructed mask and persona he'd been forced to construct since his recovery slip even an inch.

Of course what Shinichi really feared above all else was that façade turning into fact.

* * *

"Experimentations? On us?" Kaito's eyes narrowed as he sat across from Agasa while Shiho deliberately busied herself down in the lab away from the living room. Kaito was just happy that he was _finally _wrestling some answers out of the guy, even if it had taken him dragging Akako over and having her relate the strangely similar vanishing of Hakuba Saguru at almost exactly the same time that his twin had gone missing. Hakuba's name had gotten a rather strange reaction from Agasa and Kaito decided as soon as he saw that horror-filled expression that he wasn't leaving until the older man spilled his guts.

"Yes. Although quite honestly I only have a general idea of what occurred because your mother was rather vague about the whole thing after I was introduced to her," replied Agasa with a nod as he got opened the thick file folder. "All she knew for certain was that her own children were involved and that there were at least two other children who'd received similar treatment. Achika-san felt very guilty because she'd actually been the one to refer the other parents to the 'pediatrician' who was really nothing of the sort as it turned out. Of course she was murdered not too long after that as you've already discovered-" there was an uncomfortable pause while he stared down at the floor- "but I've always tried to keep an eye out over the years for any others like Shinichi. And well, both Hattori Heiji and Hakuba Saguru fit the bill admirably. Unusually intelligent boys becoming meitanteis at such young ages exactly like Shinichi..."

"How did she even _know_ these other parents?" Kaito didn't exactly want to get on the subject of his chosen (and rather illegal) career path at the moment, although he did begin to wonder if his unusually prodigious eidetic memory was perhaps a product of whatever had happened to them all.

"She knew or met them through her work in the police force- actually another reason I suspect that Hattori and Hakuba were also involved since both of their fathers work for the police force in rather high stations. That was as specific as she would ever get- she was deathly afraid of talking too much about what she'd learned. She was most assuredly running from someone for the last few months of her life. Someone or perhaps a group that caught up to her, unfortunately." He offered a sad, lopsided grin to Kaito. "After that horrific night I was left with you twin boys. I arranged Shinichi's adoption with the Kudos since I knew they were looking to adopt and the Kudos in turn recommended good friends of theirs to the counselor, though they never told me exactly where you'd gone so I could keep track. It was awfully difficult at times to hide Shinichi's unusually developed intelligence from them so I often wondered about you..."

"Well do you have any idea who exactly might have killed our birth mother? Or why? Maybe it has something to do with why they all three of the others just up and left."

"I'm afraid not, although I did overhear her mention something about men dressed in black once..." Agasa's eyes widened slightly as Kaito's demeanor underwent a near-complete transformation, his posture stiffening and his eyes hardening almost instantly. Agasa hadn't wanted to even give him that much information, but Kuroba Kaito was amazingly stubborn and relentless about this subject- and the magician also seemed to have an eerily accurate built-in lie detector.

"Men dressed in black?"

"Y-yes, that was what she said...you know, I would really appreciate it if you could please quit glaring at me like that." _What _is_ his problem? It's like he's a whole different person all of a sudden. Could he actually _know_ about the Black Organization? But how?_

"Just hurry up and give me that address Shinichi gave you. I think I may know where to begin looking." The bastards had already taken his father from him and now apparently he could add his biological mother to the list; no way in _hell_ he was letting them have his newly discovered brother as well.


	14. Chapter 14

This KID-centric chappy is hereby dedicated to Kirite/Chocolaty Taste for her lovely, amazing reviews of detailed win and awesome~

* * *

"Alright, Jii-chan. You know the plan, right?"

"Completely and totally." Jii gave Kaito a confident, somewhat weary smile. "We've gone over it enough; I've started seeing the diagrams in my sleep. I'll follow them after we're done if I can find them, don't worry. I usually see at least one or two of those men dressed entirely in black hiding in a back alley close by during the heists." He paused as he turned his attention to Kaito, taking his eyes off the road briefly. "Although I really _do_ wish you'd explain to me why you're paying them so much attention all of a sudden."

Jii let his sentence drift off unfinished (biting his tongue on the 'young master' he would have typically used- Kaito _was_ in uniform after all and Jii didn't want to use the honorative during Kaito being Kid) when it was evident that Kaito didn't want to discuss whatever it was that had suddenly led him to spend so much time on the other side of town as of late. Granted that Jii understood Kaito's actions at least somewhat- the men in black always skulking about _did_ look and behave an awful lot like the same group that had threatened Toichi, then staged his murder in the guise of a 'horrific accident,' but Kaito had never really shown any interest in openly pursuing them until this latest heist.

The magician merely nodded before he completed his costume by placing the familiar showy, large monocle over his right eye, Kaito's normally widely grinning face and boisterous personality both instantly slipping behind the eerily calm and emotionless mask of Kaitou Kid as the eyepiece's familiar weight settled on his cheek and bridge of his nose. Kaito wanted to track down his brother if it was possible, and he was hoping that with any luck the men in black Agasa-hakase had referred to were in cahoots the same black-clad gentlemen that had been steadily, quietly pursuing Kaito from the shadows since he'd brought his father's white-clad alter ego back from the dead to try and draw them out of hiding.

Of course if it _did _turn out to be that same group, the question would then turn to why his brother had decided to join up with that criminal gang, especially since Kaito had gotten the rather firm impression from his highly unpleasant past interactions with the other boy as Kaitou Kid that Kudo Shinichi was just as much of a straight-arrow Mr. Goody Two Shoes Meitantei as Kid's other irritant Hakuba Saguru. That fact was quite possibly going to lead to some...rather interesting discussions between the two of them down the road depending on how things played out, but Kaito had to find his brother first and fully assess the situation before firming up his plan of action.

"We're almost there. Nakamori-keibu sounds particularly irritated with you this evening, might I add" chuckled Jii as he flipped off the police-band radio that Kaito had on 'long-term loan' from an older squad car that had been headed for decommissioning and resale. "Pretty bold of you to announce another heist so close to the police's headquarters after that last one."

_Well, the last time I scheduled one close to the place was when that strange woman left the note in the diamond's case and then deliberately ran into me on the street the next day, setting me down the path of finding out that Kudo Shinichi and I are brothers_. Of course, Kaito had no concrete proof that the strange woman he'd run into on the street (and he was also certain that the case of 'mistaken identity' and the German story had both been a clever ruse on her part) was _also_ the one that had left the note inside of the case, but his well-honed intuition was screaming at him that they were one and the same and Kaito was never one to ignore the internal voice that had saved him on more than one occasion.

"Not really so bold. We both know the police can't catch me." Kid's knowing, smug smile slowly spread across Kaito's face as he spoke in the colder, deeper voice that he was very careful to always use when in uniform. It would have actually spooked him more than slightly, the older man knew, if Toichi hadn't done an eerily similar personality change during his own times in that showy white uniform. Jii supposed that there was a need for Kaito to distance himself mentally as much as possible from the showy persona while he played the role for the crowds- and his adoptive father's ghost, but Jii did find himself wondering sometimes if it was the best thing for Kaito's mental health.

The rest of the twenty-minute ride passed in a somewhat tense silence, the pair finally arriving at the predesignated hidden parking spot four blocks away from the robbery before disguising the van and finalizing the plans for their entry into the mansion's well-secured wing that actually housed the large sapphire that they were after. (Nakamori-keibu had apparently decided to increase the radius that was sealed off after the last heist that had embarrassed the police so much, Kaito noted with a somewhat bemused inwardly turned smirk that he wouldn't allow to crack Kid's mask.)

"Here's the fire escape I told you about," whispered Jii exitedly as he approached an abandoned warehouse and pointed to a series of metal ladders and landings leading directly up the side of the building. "Leads right up to the roof of the place, make a few rooftop leaps and you'll be on the roof of the mansion's easternmost guard shack. Of course, how you're going to get from there and into the house itself is-"

"Already planned out. Of course." Kaito grabbed the bottom rungs of the fire escape and quickly leapt onto the ladder's rungs before making his rather slow, shaky way up what he rapidly discovered to be a very aged, rusted fire escape that should probably have been replaced about ten years ago if not sooner. He finished scaling up to the roof while writing a mental Stick-It note to remind Jii to please actually _check _the different stairs and things that he'd be climbing during robberies if Jii was having to plan the route out without Kaito being able to do that checking like he normally did.

"Now, let's see where they're at in their patrols..." Kaito grabbed a pair of small binoculars out of a hidden inner pocket in his jacket and scanned the route he'd planned across the rooftops leading towards the mansion, trying to decide when to time his leaps and movements so one of the searchlights in the area wouldn't catch him in it (there were a few more searchlights than normal, too, he noticed- Nakamori-keibu must have _seriously_ gotten angry about that last heist.)

He made the first flying leap a few moments later, hoping that the roof of the abandoned warehouse he was landing on was a solid as it seemed during his visual inspection. Kaito was happy when he managed to stick his landing right behind one of the massive steel pipes jutting up from the roof, exactly where he had wanted to wind up at. He allowed himself a single impatient huff while he waited for the spotlights to finish their sweep of the area before making his second jump, scrambling a bit to recatch his balance thanks to a distinctly un-Kidlike moment of nearly missing the ledge he'd headed for. _Did I really misjudge the distance that badly? _

It was after a few highly puzzled moments of pondering the question and studying the kump he'd just made that Kaito realized he hadn't misjudged the distance after all...it almost seemed like the edge of the building itself had moved back a bit in between his initial assessment of the gap and the leap. _OK, wait. What? A building doesn't move like that... _Kaito began inspecting the rooftop that he was on more carefully, so intent on trying to figure out what was going on that the faint grinding sounds issuing beneath him took a few moments longer to register than they normally would have even to his currently adrenaline-enhanced senses.

He began looking around for possible escape routes after his eyes caught sight of a very interestingly unmarked black helicopter that seemed to be headed for a landing on the roof of the very building he was on at the moment. Only one possible course of action led to him not exposing himself to either the searchlights or the approaching chopper, so he hopped into one of the large metal vent pipes on the roof and put its large 'lid' back into place, hoping that whatever was going on wouldn't take too long so he'd still be on time to the heist.

Kaito had to admit to himself while he readjusted his hat after he finished settling in to his hiding spot that an unmarked helicopter flying so close to a currently cordoned off police zone that at least seemed to have none of those said police questioning its presence was making him rather curious in spite of the fact that he really _should_ have been focusing on the heist that would be going down shortly. Well, going down shortly if this strange helicopter didn't wind up causing him a considerable delay, he though darkly with a considerable amount of annoyance that made him carefully restrain a frown.

The overly loud buzz of the metal pipe vibrating around him thanks to the artificially generated wind generated by the landing chopper made him feel like hornets were surrounding him in the near-total darkness as the helicopter finished its landing. Kaito noticed that the noise seemed to grow slightly fainter after a couple of minutes, and he decided to risk taking off his hat momentarily so he could look around by pressing his head up against the top of the the metal pipe so that he could try and look out the small gap he had to try and see what was going on. He almost go knocked off balance again as he realized that the building was shaking a bit under him- so that explained the mystery of the moving building, it was probably designed to shift a bit to make sure that the helicopter had a little 'buffer room' in order to ensure a safe landing.

Kudo Shinichi had been the very last person thing that Kaito had ever expected to see at that moment through his admittedly narrow field of vision, but it was definitely the missing meitantei who was scrambling to slip the large hood he'd been wearing back into place after a gust blew the hood backwards.

* * *

"Tell me, Vermouth, are you making any real progress tracking...the subject down?"

Vermouth quickly suppressed a slight tic that had actually threatened to fully coalesce into a knowing smile. _He _was always so very cutely worried about his grandsons now that they'd decided to track them down and bring them into the fold, though of course _He_ would never openly admit that blood relationship in order to curtail any chance of a coup d'etat attempted through exploiting that relationship.

"The visit to the hospital was most informative, yes." Vermouth wasn't going to reveal exactly how informative, not unless _He _asked directly. Besides, part of her wanted to see what sort of game the other silver bullet would play now that she'd pulled the trigger. "I've tracked down the man who arranged the adoption. I'll contact him very soon. I haven't talked to him yet because I'm still trying to come up with a plausible cover story for approaching him about the adoption." She wouldn't, of course, tell him that she'd already found his grandson and even contacted Kuroba Kaito face to face.

"Good. As you know, correcting that woman's mistake is at the top of my priority list." He let out a single cough before adding "Although I do have to say that I'm still not quite sure about this idea of yours. Bringing those others in like you have. Then again, I suppose since you were partially to blame for certain events you felt it necessary."

"It made the most logical sense at the time, and I still believe it does." Vermouth decided to display just enough indignation that the emotion would be perceived as real. "Would you rather they still be running around in their former occupations? Perhaps eventually deciding to dig around into some of our shell corporations and contacts in the process?"

"Of course not. Far better to have that intelligence of theirs working for us. But there _are_ several of our named members who are...questioning of their loyalty to us. And rightfully so, I think upon further reflection. It's not as if they were raised within the Organization like Grenadine was."

Vermouth knew that this conversation had just turned very serious; Grenadine was very seldom mentioned even by his code name as per _His _instructions. Vermouth suspected that she was an exemption to the rule because she had helped raise Grenadine to an extent. The somewhat unwelcome but not unexpected news that the brain trust wasn't exactly trusted by senior members didn't shock Vermouth in the slightest- being in the Organization for any length of time tended to instill one with that sort of paranoia. "You know, perhaps it would interest Quinine to meet Grenadine, and vice versa." Vermouth left the reason unspoken since they both knew exactly why she was proposing the idea.

"No. Absolutely not." This was accompanied by a firm head shake and the familiar dismissive tone that told Vermouth in no uncertain terms that the meeting was over and the subject was not up for further deliberation. "Not until Quinine has proven himself enough to the Organization."

Vermouth nodded her head, then exited the room while wondering how best to make that meeting happen.


	15. Chapter 15

"I don't have time to explain this right now, but could you watch that building the helicopter just took off from closely and tell me if anyone comes out of it? Especially if it's someone wearing a long black coat with a big hood."

It was readily apparent to Jii that something Kaito encountered up on the roof had deeply shaken the magician. Moreover, not only had it managed to wholly shatter the teen's poker face, whatever it was had _also_ rattled him to the point that he was completely forgetting to use the voice he assumed when donning Kid's white suit- a detail that Kaito was always bordering on obsessively careful about due to the high risk of his true voice being recognized by either Nakamori Aoko or her father. Frowning in puzzlement, Jii replied in what he hoped was a firm enough tone to snap Kaito back into his role; it would be very dangerous for him if he _didn't_ refocus himself and quickly. "I will, Kid. But hurry up and get started or you're going to be late to the heist."

"R-right. Switching over to the second scheduled radio frequency now." Jii was relieved that Kaito replied in Kid's voice, even if he had stuttered at first. _But what on Earth could have possibly caused that sort of reaction, especially in uniform? Normally once he's 'become Kid' he's almost completely unflappable…_

While his frown deepened and policemen chattered in brisk, professional tones over the police band radio that was sitting in the backseat, Jii wondered if it had anything to do with Kaito having asked Akita for his birth certificate last week. The subject of his biological parentage wasn't something Kaito had ever shown much interest in researching previously, after all, and not even Toichi or Akita had known too much about the time of Kaito's birth until the Kudos had approached them and mentioned that a family friend knew of a six month old boy who was going to be eligible for adoption. Jii then found himself recalling something he'd nearly forgotten about. _I always did wonder about how much Kaito looked like the Kudo's boy…the one that became a meitantei. What was his name again? He was all over the papers and television for a while and also caused Kaito quite a bit of trouble...that's right, it was Kudo Shinichi.  
_

Almost as if in reply to Jii's musings, the side door to the building Kaito had asked him to watch opened and someone in a long, black jacket with a wide hood appeared after a massive pair of bodyguards finished a preemptive scan of the area. Feeling very grateful that he'd decided to disguise the van as an old beaten up heap that couldn't be driven as well as the fact that he'd parked in the shadows by force of long-established habit, Jii pressed down on his two-way radio. "The person you asked me to watch for is coming out of the building, and they've got company."

"Damn! I was hoping they wouldn't be leaving so quickly. If they actually leave try and follow them if you can manage it without being noticed." Jii noticed that Kaito seemed to have fully recovered his composure now; there was no slip into his real voice or stutter present any longer.

"Alright. But why-"

"Did you notice his body language? The guy in the long hooded jacket, I mean."

After Kaito asked the question, Jii studied the hooded person more closely while wondering how Kaito had known that they were male and quickly realizing that this person was more than likely the source of Kaito's strange behavior after he'd began crossing the roofs. The person seemed very tense all around, and his hood kept moving from left to right when his bodyguards like he was looking for a way to escape but couldn't or wouldn't actually make the attempt. "I do notice it- he looks as if he wants out of there. Do you know him?"

"Yes-in a manner of speaking. Just keep an eye on him for the time being and if they try to leave, see what you can come up with in the way of a delay would you?"

"What are you planning on doing exactly?"

"If you can buy me the time to finish the heist I'd like to help him do what he so clearly wants to do-leave. Besides, I've been looking for him; we're overdue for a talk."

"I see." Well he didn't _really_ understand at all actually, but there would be time enough to ask about whatever was going on later when they weren't in the middle of a heist.

* * *

"I_ told_ him. I told that man over and over again that we should have told Saguru everything as soon as he was old enough to understand it." Emily Taylor, the former wife of Metropolitan Chief of Police Hakuba Yoshinari, then looked up at the pair of detectives who had come calling to her hotel room in Tokyo with a bitter expression and eyes edged with tears that she wouldn't permit to fall. "That difference of opinion on the subject was the biggest cause of the rift between us that eventually led to our divorce when Saguru was four." She sighed and adjusted the black clip she had pinned her wavy, shoulder-length blonde hair back with before taking a sip of ice water. "And you know, even though both Yoshinari and I tried our hardest to have the divorce not be acrimonious at all- and most especially to not _ever_ actually discuss in front of Saguru why we were separating- I think that somehow, Saguru simply _knew_ that it was something to do with him and his unnatural intelligence."

Both Satou and Takagi had been initially grateful for Emily's very fluent Japanese, but what she had to say had quickly driven the thought from their minds as their questioning had quickly led them down a bizarre, dark road that they were still wondering how to even attempt to navigate.

"Do you have any idea if there were any other children who were...given what Saguru was injected with?" Takagi found himself not even needing to look down at the notes that he'd been taking during the interview.

"Well, Amano Achika recommended that fake pediatrician to more than just Yoshinari and me, I'm fairly certain of that. She was always very enthusiastic about trying to help people." Emily looked down at her glass of water before adding "Although now that I really think about what happened it wasn't _Achika_ who told us about that man and sent us to him. It was her husband, Kenji..."

"Amano Kenji? Do you know what kind of job he had or where he worked at?"

"Kenji always had a way of avoiding that question, Satou-keiji. I don't even think Achika knew much more than that he had a job with some corporation somewhere- I don't even think that she knew the company's _name_ truth be told. He was gone an awful lot on business trips, especially after Achika became pregnant. Hell, when she had her children that man didn't even show up at the hospital until after she'd finished giving birth."

"Sounds like someone we should look into." Takagi finished his notes before flipping to an earlier page. "I know that you flew here to meet with us because of our colleague down in Osaka placing a call with someone that referred him to you because of how many similarities that Saguru's disappearance bears to Hattori Heiji's. Do you know the Hattoris at all?"

"No, but then even back when Yoshinari and I were married I would sometimes have to return to England for months at a time due to my job being in England. He might have met them somewhere or run into them. Not that he would ever actually _speak_ to you about what happened to Saguru, of course. He likes to pretend that...whatever exactly was done to him never happened, although _he_ was the one who first came up with the idea of trying to steer Saguru's intelligence towards solving crime." After she finished off her glass of water, Emily shook her head. "Of course, as you know it worked- perhaps too well. Especially with Yoshinari's connections helping him at first, although Saguru eventually decided that he didn't want to live in his father's shadow and began focusing his detective work on when he came to visit me in England. He wound up solving over five hundred cases before deciding to stay with his father on a more frequent basis thanks to Kaitou Kid, the first criminal who seemed to even be partially on the same intellectual plane as Saguru. Well, I think it was a combination of that and the fact that Kid always returns what he takes, but you get the general idea."

"And he didn't give you any indication of where he was going or who he was going with? Just that he had somehow found out what had been done to him and that he wanted some time to think things over?"

"Honestly, I don't know what exactly he said in his letter," came her reply to Satou. "It was- it was his governess that he actually sent the thing to the night that he never arrived back in Japan from visiting me all those months ago. Of course, that doesn't surprise me at all; I think that she was more of a mother figure to him sometimes than I ever was because she was there physically."

"What's his governess's name? Is she here in Japan?" Takagi felt like they finally had something solid to pursue.

"Yes, she still lives in Japan although I don't have her address. I do have her phone number, though- she's kept in touch with me, probably because she knows I was always against keeping what had happened to him from Saguru." Jane opened the black purse she'd had sitting by her and rifled through it until she found her cell phone and began scrolling through her contact list. "Her name is Shiori- Minawa Shiori. Give me a moment and I'll give you her number."

"Going back over my notes, I see you mentioned that Amano Achika was the one who referred you to the pediatrician who really wasn't a pediatrician. Do you have her contact information as well? She may be a valuable resource in our investigation."

"I'm afraid not, Takagi-keiji. She was murdered many years ago- almost seventeen years ago now in fact. They never did manage to solve that case, either even though because it _was_ the murder of a policewoman they kept at it far longer than they probably should have."

"Murdered? What about her children? Did they go to live with their father, or do you know anything about that?" Satou sat poised with her notepad.

"Yes, those poor boys...I didn't meet him much but Kenji never struck me as a particularly paternal sort to be frank about it. It wouldn't shock me if he'd put them up for adoption or foisted them off on relatives somewhere. Achika was so proud of them, too...all three of them. It's a sad thing and a shame, really."

"Three of them? How old were they all when her murder happened?"

"Oh, she had six month old triplets- identical triplet boys. Now what were their names again...it's been so long..." Emily suddenly brightened. "That's it! The boys' names were Aritei, Aishu and Akugi..."


	16. Chapter 16

"What the hell is going on here, Vermouth?" Gin knew that he couldn't exactly reveal his knowledge that it was the supposedly long-deceased Kudo Shinichi under Quinine's hood without a high risk of being killed, but he finally had the eternally coy, slippery blonde (or brunette, or redhead, or- to hell with it, who _knew_ what her natural hair color was?) cornered and he was damned if he wasn't going to finally get some real answers out of her. "Several of my people are asking me questions about the Brain Trust and I know you're the one that can best supply me with answers. Especially since the whole thing was set up on _your_ suggestion in the first place, from what I've heard." Gin's eyes narrowed reflexively as he finished the sentence.

"I explained it to you already," came the smooth, emotionless reply. "We did some recruiting from the outside." This was followed by Vermouth lightly shrugging her shoulders in a nonchalant gesture that really irritated Gin, doubly so because he _also _knew that she had done it purposefully knowing it would irk him. "Well, perhaps not _recruiting_ so much as development."

"How exactly did you decide who to recruit?" This was followed by Gin rather pointedly tapping the butt end of the small gun that he made no secret within the Organization of always carrying with him in a hidden pocket of his trench coat. Not that the threat would do any good, of course; Gin would never be able to actually fire at Vermouth without express, direct orders from _Him_ and since Vermouth was unmistakably _His_ favorite it would have probably taken an open attempt at a _coup d'état _for their head to even consider the notion.

"Do you remember APTX-48, Gin?" Vermouth eyed him nonchalantly while wearing a somewhat smug expression and sipping a glass of water. "Well, more than likely you weren't high enough on our ladder back when it was actually being tested to hear of it."

"What does that have to do with anything?"

"Almost everything, actually." Another one of her secret-laced smiles followed; Gin would have very happily beat it off of Vermouth's face if she wasn't engaging in her usual habit of wearing her status as the Boss's favorite like a pricey mink jacket. "It started with the laboratory trials on the rats, if my memory serves me correctly." The damn smile never left her face.

"Trials for what? Get to the point already."

"Originally they were supposed to be tests regarding APTX-48 and the aging process. Or rather, the slowing down of that process. But it turned into something quite different as the trials went on." She settled down into a comfortable position facing Gin on one of the chairs in her quarters. "The rats," she continued in an even tone, "began to exhibit what appeared to be signs of unnatural intelligence, and a couple of them that had been injected with the later batch of APTX-48 seemed to possess a strangely acute recall as well- what seemed to be a sort of photographic memory, in fact."

"And this has what to do with the Brain Trust, exactly?" Gin actually had a fairly good idea where this was going, but he wanted to hear it from Vermouth's own mouth after finally pinning her down. _Why did the Organization ever let these kids leave in the first place if she tells me what I think she's about to tell me? _Something seemed very strange about it to Gin, who knew that the Organization was usually much more methodical and careful than that about tying up any of their loose ends.

"You could say that the Brain Trust is comprised of most of the human portion of experimentation with APTX-48, once its potential was fully realized. There were a total of four subjects initially, and then two who were…added into the fold a couple of months later."

"I know that smirk of yours- you had something to do with the other two, didn't you?"

"Nosy, nosy." The amused glint in Vermouth's eyes told Gin that he'd hit at least somewhere fairly close to the mark. "I'm _already_ telling you more than I think you have a right to know, but once _He _learned that you were cornering several of our agents and threatening them while asking questions that you shouldn't have been asking it was decided to fully satisfy your curiosity."

"Then answer the question I just asked." Gin grimaced internally; he knew that he really should have known better than to expect reports of his behavior to go unnoted by their leader, especially considering that he was asking after the strange black-hooded group that seemed to be the brainpower behind most all of their activities for the past several months.

"I was involved in some manner with _all_ of the test subjects, although not directly with all of them. I gave weekly status reports to _Him_ and in fact still do. As I have ever since we decided to slowly and eventually infiltrate the upper ranks of the police department here in Japan eighteen years ago."

* * *

As he listened to the woman he had referred to as his mother for as long as he could remember talk to Gin through the other side of the door in muffled tones, Grenadine- he hardly ever thought of himself as Amano Aishu and that fact was very much encouraged by both his father and grandfather- wondered why she was being so talkative. Vermouth tended to be reticent and secretive by nature, and it seemed most unlike her. Then again, his grandfather _had_ directly ordered her to talk so there wasn't room for her usual tactic of deliberate misinterpretation when it suited her.

He knew that he was one of five or six test subjects that had been injected with some sort of experimental intelligence-enhancing drug in his infancy, but Vermouth would never get more specific about their identities than that. Well, that and the fact that the Organization had decided to use the collective intelligence of their test subjects through forming the Brain Trust, bringing them back through their usual route of subtle manipulation turned into threats once the group had eventually caught on.

_We were going to work in the background to help push their families towards the top of the Japanese police force and then make the parents do our bidding through the children once we had the children firmly under our thumbs. Unfortunately, your biological mother discovered what we were planning for the future- what we'd already done with the APTX 48, actually- and she wanted no part of it. She took you and ran…_

Aishu had always gotten the impression that his adoptive mother might have been fond of Amano Achika before she had disappeared, though it was always very difficult with Vermouth to tell what exactly she was thinking. When he'd finally gotten up the nerve to ask about his real mother and what had happened, Vermouth had very momentarily worn a genuine smile before sitting him down with the comment "I'd always wondered when you would ask about Achika-san, Aishu." That was another strange thing he wondered about sometimes; while his father and grandfather insisted that he refer both to himself and to them by code name only, Vermouth always used his true name when the others weren't around to hear it.

He brushed off a few strands of dark brown hair that were barely noticeable on the blazer of his three-piece black suit as he moved away from the wooden door he'd had his ear pressed against and began hunting around the small, neatly furnished room that served as his bedroom. That picture…where was the picture? He wasn't sure whether the photograph was actually real or not, but he had found it tucked into the very back of a closet that had since become full of a pile of wigs and makeup that was forever in state of disorder thanks to the fact that he was nearly always in disguise when he ventured out on missions for the Organization. In fact, very few people within the group had ever actually seen his real face besides his father, grandfather and Vermouth- and that was exactly the way his grandfather wanted it.

"Aishu." Vermouth's voice on the other side of the door made him jump up, Aishu having been startled thanks to his mind being focused elsewhere. His name being used also told him that she'd somehow gotten rid of Gin.

"Yes, Mother?" _I know that tone; we're going somewhere she's unhappy about going to. I wonder just what's going on...  
_

"Put something together and quickly. We have a meeting to attend."

By 'something', Aishu knew that she meant a disguise which in turn told him that they weren't meeting with his father or grandfather- or at least that they weren't meeting with just the two of them. "OK. I'll need about ten minutes." He rustled through his wigs and makeup as Vermouth stepped away from the other side of the door, trying to quickly settle on who he wanted to become for the day. Aishu had three or four preferred disguises but decided to whip up someone new, grabbing a silver-haired man's wig and a wig cap to help keep his slightly mussy hair in place and setting both items down beside him. He then got to work on the identity change by expertly placing a pair of brown contacts in place over his deep blue eyes.

Aishu was overjoyed when he found the photograph he'd been looking for when he opened a drawer to put some makeup away once he was finished. It was a simple photograph of a woman with blue eyes and dark hair. Part of him wasn't quite sure whether it being a picture of his mother was another one of Vermouth's fabrications, but there was another part of him that seemed to know that it was just by looking at her. He kept it very carefully hidden because he knew that it would probably be taken from him if it was ever found. Well, there was no time to be thinking about that subject at the moment; he had to finish preparing his disguise.

* * *

"Well, are we going to call this woman, Minawa Shiori, after we get off of work tomorrow Takagi-kun? I think it's a little late to call her tonight." Satou studied the business card that Emily Taylor had copied the contact information for the other woman down on, wondering just what she was getting herself into but also knowing that there was no way she'd let Takagi continue down the path he was traveling alone.

"I agree. And yeah, I think we should call her. Hopefully we'll get some more leads but even if we don't we can continue on checking the leads we've found. Especially that Amano Kenji guy." Takagi paused and looked over at his partner, briefly taking his eyes off of the road. "That is, if you're sure that you want to continue helping me investigate these cases."

"As long as it doesn't interfere with our regular work, I don't mind. Plus detective work always tends to be easier when the work is divided up, right?"

"Yeah. I'm finding it strange how uncooperative that Hattori Heiji's parents are being, though. It's almost as if they think they can undo what happened by just not talking about it."

"Well, maybe they kept what was done to him as an infant a secret from him as well. If his disappearance is even related to the same secret, that is." The both of their heads were reeling from the sheer enormity of what Emily had told them, but it suddenly made a lot of things about the missing pair of meitantei fall into place. How young they'd both started solving cases, for one thing.

"That's one of the first things we need to figure out, I think. I have this feeling that it will help assemble the puzzle much more quickly once we get to the bottom of what exactly was done to them, and by who."

The pair sped off through the night, listening to the police band radio to hear how the Kid task force was doing at preparing to prevent Kid from making off with the jewel he was scheduled to heist in fifteen minutes.


	17. Chapter 17

"Get moving now, Quinine; we're not staying here any longer than we have to. The boss-man doesn't like any of you being in Japan longer than absolutely necessary."

Shinichi merely glared at the ground in front of him in reply as he walked, using his hood to hide his expression as the largest of his three bodyguards poked his back firmly with the business end of an AK-47. It figured that the Black Organization's head wanted to avoid having any of the three of them on Japanese soil because the territory was so familiar and there were a lot of places that any of them could have bolted to given the chance. He knew that if ever presented with such an opportunity he'd run in a heartbeat- if it weren't for the fact that he felt so guilty about not seeing the Organization's trap before it had been sprung. Unless he could get Hakuba Saguru and Hattori Heiji spirited away in addition to himself, he wasn't leaving. Well, assuming the both of them weren't already dead or long dead and the other people under the hoods at their rare face-to-face meetings were actually them.

He also allowed himself the occasional crazy dream about the three of them trying to do what they could to hamper the Organization after their liberation, although his former, highly naïve delusions about being able to bring them down some day had been thoroughly shattered after he'd been their unwilling servant for a few months. They were _everywhere_, in even more places than Shinichi had expected or realized, and their poisonous roots ran so thick and deep that there was no way they could ever be fully removed without most likely fatally crippling all of the governments and other institutions that had matured with their own foundations ensnared by those roots. The best that could possibly be hoped for was lobbing off a head or two from the ebony hydra, running away and then going back later to chop off some more heads in an endless, ultimately fruitless cycle. That didn't mean he didn't want to _try_, though, if he could ever manage to free himself, Hattori and Hakuba from the group.

He idly found himself wondering if the friendly-looking older man carefully following them a couple blocks back (the guy was in a construction worker's disguise but Shinichi could tell a wig and a hastily done moustache dye job when he saw one, plus his clothing wasn't worn or dirty enough to be passable as an actual laborer) had any other plan in mind besides merely tailing them while lurking in the shadows behind the group as they approached the secure warehouse Shinichi was supposed to put together a security plan for. Either way, he wasn't going to mention the guy to his oblivious bodyguards because his long-dormant meitantei instincts were suddenly screaming in his ear not to say a word, and those instincts were one of the only things left that Shinichi unconditionally trusted. He'd ignored his instincts' similarly insistent admonitions of danger nine and half months ago during that meeting, after all, and the end result of _that_ spoke for itself.

* * *

Dammit, he had to _focus. _

Kaito shook his head slightly and made sure his hat was seated snugly on his head, allowing himself one last glance at the area where his brother was before pulling out his sleep-inducing cards and loading them into his gun. All he could really do was complete the heist and hope that Jii was able to keep an eye on Kudo Shinichi until Kaito could go and assist Jii with…'removing' his brother from the situation, however they'd wind up going about doing that.

He already knew that he didn't want to go and take back his twin as Kaitou Kid, because those black-jacketed guys looked very similar to the group that had known his father's- and ergo most likely his and his mother's- names. Kaito didn't want to give them any reason to suspect that Kaitou Kid was a part of anything, and he was trying to figure the best solution to that problem as he carefully cut a piece of glass large enough for his gloved hand to pass through to the other side of a door. _I wonder if Jii is still carrying around that three-piece black thermal undersuit I used_ _that time they tried storing the diamond in a walk-in freezer…._

"Young master, they're taking him in to an abandoned warehouse a few blocks away," Jii hissed in Kaito's ear as he finished turning the doorknob and steeping inside of the small and very surprisingly unsecured anteroom that was next to the store manager's office. "I think the hooded fellow saw me at some point, but he didn't say anything to the guards with him." Jii coughed, then added "I trust that you'll be explaining exactly why I'm tailing him later. I don't like the idea of being away from the police scanner while you're actually in the building, you know."

"I'll explain later, yeah. Just keep an eye on him until I'm done here and don't worry about me." _If Kudo actually _did _see Jii-chan it's lucky that he didn't blow the whistle. Of course, knowing that guy and his personality I really doubt he's doing whatever he's doing for those guys willingly. _All the more reason to get him out, in Kaito's opinion. As he approached the inner door, he could hear Nakamori Ginzo's familiar, slightly irate voice on the other side.

"…that damn guy, and make sure you try and figure out what the hell that other helicopter was doing here earlier too. That registration number we got off its tail came back to some weird shell corporation, and as careful as Kid is I seriously doubt he'd spend the time and money to set up an entire phony corporation just to throw off tracing a helicopter."

After realizing that the older man was quite close to the door, Kaito grinned and decided to see if he could put him out of commission by knocking the keibu out- it would buy him a few minutes of valuable time while the police scrambled to reestablish a new chain of command at any rate. _No telling how many officers are on the other side of that door along with him, though. I'd better play it safe and wait to see- _

His thoughts were interrupted by the doorknob on the door he currently had his ear pressed up against suddenly turning freely even though it had been locked when he'd checked it a few minutes ago. Kaito quickly made a headfirst dive behind some sort of large object that was covered with a drop cloth, hoping that whoever was opening the door was either a) an unaccompanied Nakamori or b) not planning to stay in the room for very long.

"Go on ahead, the rest of you. I'm going to check this room out and then catch up, alright? Step on it, Kaitou Kid is due any minute." Much to Kaito's delight, Nakamori Ginzo stepped into the room by himself and began looking around.

_Couldn't ask for a more perfect setup. _"Time for a nap, although it means you'll sadly miss all the fun." This was followed by him whipping out his gun and shooting two of the sleep cards at Ginzo. Before the older man could react, the two cards exploding and releasing small charges of sleeping gas that caused the keibu to ungracefully clump to the ground with a round of virulent cursing just starting to pass his lips as he fell.

"Excuse me, but I'll be borrowing that if you don't mind." Kaito stepped out and grabbed the walkie-talkie that Ginzo had been using from the ground, one of Kaitou Kid's signature grins fully splashed across his face as a great idea suddenly came to him. He cleared his throat lightly before pressing the transmittal button and assuming Ginzo's voice. "I want all of you over in the east wing, and RIGHT NOW dammit! Some window intrusion sensors just went off over there, get moving! And I mean ALL of you!"

Allowing himself a few chuckles at the resultant burst of confusion and mad scrambling towards the completely opposite site of the building that was clearly ensuing thanks to the frantic radio chatter that was bursting forth from the two-way he was carrying, Kaito realized that this room was actually an excellent one to reach his target from after he recalled the plans for the facility that he'd memorized. _And the sooner I get this over with, the sooner I can get Kudo Shinichi away from those guys. _The fact that he was Kaitou Kid and Kudo had been one of the detectives trying to catch him was something they'd have to deal with later.

After sticking out a tiny camera through the bottom of the door to ensure that the hallway was clear, Kaito stepped out and quickly made his way over to the jewel, managing to not trip any of the motion detectors thanks to having scouted the room out as a janitor the week before and knowing exactly where the sensors were set. After using a glass cutter to expertly extract the jewel, he shot a small grappling gun up towards the roof and hooked on the edge of a solar panel that he'd guessed the angle of correctly thanks to blueprints. Once he'd reeled himself up and jimmied the panel to be able to get out on the roof, he decided to have a final bit of fun. "Thanks for the jewel, my fine police officers," he said before giving a signature Kid laugh and tossing the walkie-talkie back down into the museum through the panel.

"Young master, are you through with the heist? If so they're still here at this old warehouse, although it looks like they're getting ready to leave in ten minutes."

"I'm done, yeah. Nakamori-keibu's not gonna like me very much though. Of course, he never liked me much to begin with." Kaito made a half-leap down a fire escape and ran towards the location of the van. "Is the van still in the same spot? I'm going to change, don't want these guys associating Kid with getting him out of there."

"It's in the same spot, yes. I hope this guy is worth all of this trouble, but since you're going to such great lengths I'm sure he is."

"I hope so. I'll explain more once we get him out of there."

* * *

Shinichi had a sneaking suspicion that the guy who'd been following them was going to make a move, and soon. He hadn't seen the guy for a good four or five minutes, and it had also looked like the guy was talking into a headset of some sort in the moments before he'd vanished. He had this weird feeling that the guy was holding the first shot at freedom Shinichi would have since he'd so stupidly let the Organization bring him into its fold, and he hoped that that feeling would turn out to be more than just a feeling- as long as the others were freed from their imprisonment as well. Sure, the guy could have been one of their enemies looking for a chance to kill him but those instincts of his were telling him that wasn't the case.

"Almost done, Quinine? We were told you should only need twenty minutes to finish the survey and ten have already passed."

"No. And don't ask me again. Twenty minutes means twenty minutes." In truth, it was just a shell of a building that would be very easy to install security in but Shinichi was very much trying to play for any and every scrap of time that he possibly could, hoping with a near desperation that the older man who'd been tailing them would come back.

When the first of his bodyguards hit the ground after some sort of small object flew through the air and a gas enveloping him, Shinichi whirled around and took the second of the guards by surprise, grabbing the AK-47 that had been at his back with a surprising lack of struggle and making the other guard stand still at gunpoint while what Shinichi now realized was a sleeping gas grenade of some form took him down. _He did come back after all...I hope I can talk whoever this guy is into helping me get to Hakuba and Hattori..._

"Get over here! We're leaving NOW-" Shinichi realized that the man from earlier had snuck up behind his third guard and knocked him out in mid-sentence with the business end of a steel rod that had been part of the factory's former life as a steel mill. He had just decided to ask the man what he wanted and just what was going on when he realized that one of the gas grenades had rolled right under him from its original landing spot, and he immediately felt the effects of the gas. He could barely manage to lay the AK-47 down before he completely slipped into unconsciousness.

Ten minutes later after loading the unconscious hooded figure into the van and leaving the area, Jii decided to finally broach the subject of what they'd just done. "So, young master, do you mind explaining why we did all this?" _He's a young guy, though, and his face looks so familiar..._

"Because," replied Kaito as he looked in the rearview mirror at the figure stretched out on the van's large backseat, "that guy is my brother."


	18. Chapter 18

"Something that happened last night has caused the hornet's nest here to suddenly stir quite a bit, Jodie-san."

_Last night? That's strange; we didn't have any intelligence that they were making any big moves or anything like that. Of course, it _is _the Black Organization; they're _too_ damn good at holding their cards very close to their chest. _"Any idea exactly what happened?" Jodie wasn't too hopeful, but you never knew if one of the members might let something slip that they shouldn't have even if they were exceedingly careful with imparting information in front of the 'returned traitor' Hondou Hidemi.

"Apparently, depending on which rumor you want to believe a rather high-ranking member either was kidnapped or arranged his escape late last night during a security screening of an abandoned warehouse in Japan. The member and their accomplices -or kidnappers- seemingly used the cover of a nearby Kaitou Kid heist to get away after the member's bodyguards were knocked unconscious with gas." Hidemi cleared her throat in what was a seeming effort to conceal a chuckle. "According to my sources, _He's _simply furious about it either way and it's not a question of _if_ heads are going to roll, but when. It does seem to confirm the other things that members have told me in confidence, however."

"Oh? What sort of things?" After she'd seen the rather reluctant Eisuke off on his return trip to the United States with promises to let him know about any further developments, Jodie had received permission from her superiors to check into the Black Organization's latest doings to try and unravel the secret of their stealthy successes over the past nine and a half months. Maybe this would finally be the break that Jodie had been waiting for, if Hidemi wasn't forced to hang up before she could finish explaining.

"Well, about nine months or so ago there was some external recruiting done for the development of a brain trust for the Organization, or so some reliable birds have chirped. I've further been told that the people recruited may not necessarily have been brought in knowing what they were getting into-that they were brought in under false pretenses and are basically being held hostage with their friends and families' lives being dangled over their heads."

"Sounds like a pretty typical M.O. for the Organization," replied Jodie with a nod of her head as she wove her way into the traffic headed away from the airport. "Have you ever laid eyes on any of them besides this guy in the photograph that you sent, or do you have any idea how many of them that there are? Eisuke and I have tracked the kid in the photograph down by the way, or at least we're ninety-nine percent certain it's him."

"I haven't seen any of them besides him, no, and neither has anyone else. Or rather I should say that if anyone else _has_, the death penalty is keeping them very quiet on the subject. There's supposedly somewhere between three and four of them- well, two to three after last night, although no one seems to know the exact number except for Vermouth and _Him_."

_Hmm. I should probably call Shiori, the woman that Eisuke and I have spoken to before after this call. Maybe she's heard from Hakuba Saguru or has found out some new information in the past few days. I wonder how he wound up working for those guys in the first place. _"I see. Well, I know we're about at our call's time limit and I have someone I need to talk to, so-"

"Yes. Goodbye." This was immediately followed by the dial tone buzzing in Jodie's ear. _Someone must have walked in. Oh well, time to call Shiori and see if she knows anything. _Jodie dialed the hand-written number after a one-handed rummage through her purse and was happy when the older woman picked up on the second ring.

"Moshi moshi, this is Minawa Shiori."

"Hello, Minawa-san. I don't know if you remember me, but we spoke a few days ago about Hakuba Saguru's disappearance; this is Starling Jodie. I was calling because I've found out some new information from my contact and was wondering if you'd heard anything new about Saguru Hakuba."

"Well, perhaps it would be best if you also shared that informant's information with the pair of police offers who are coming to visit me later today, Starling-san," replied Shiori. "The two of them are looking into the disappearance of another boy, Hattori Heiji, down in Osaka that took place about nine and a half months ago that his parents and the police seem to not want to talk about. In fact, interestingly enough he and Saguru-botchama seem to have even disappeared on the exact same day." There was a rustling of paper, and then she continued. "Here's another pair of interesting facts. He's the son of Osaka's chief of police, and he was-err, is _also_ a meitantei from what that pair of keiji told me yesterday."

_I wonder…could Hattori Heiji possibly be another of the 'brain trust' that Hidemi mentioned? She _did_ say there was something like three or four of them, and that does seem like some very interesting similarities between the two…_"That sounds like it may be a very good idea. What time is the meeting scheduled for, Minawa-san?"

* * *

Whatever had happened last night, Vermouth knew something more about it than she was telling his grandfather and the others. Well really, probably a _lot _more, but Aishu felt enough loyalty to the woman who had raised him to not bring the subject up in front of the head of the Black Organization or his right-hand man- Aishu's father, Kenji. The others present at the meeting were higher-ranking members, but none had half of the pull or influence Vermouth had and their irate expressions indicated that they knew it as well as she did. His facial skin itched a bit thanks to the sheer amount of latex he'd had to use to properly pull off a sixty-year-old appearance, but Aishu's mind was more focused on the meeting and he didn't dare risk actually scratching his face and possibly rubbing off some makeup in the process.

"Do we know for an absolute fact whether or not it was a kidnapping or an escape yet?" Amano Kenji's dark brown eyes met Aishu's for a moment before boring into the eyes of everyone else at the table in turn. "We're hearing three very different versions of events from those damn worthless bodyguards, and that's exceptionally troubling. None of the three stories seem to be changing at all even under hard interrogation and truth serum, either. One says Quinine put an AK-47 to his back after everything started which seems to imply that he planned it with whoever showed up, one says they were ambushed by at least two people and that he didn't see Quinine do anything and the third says that he didn't see anyone at all, just gas suddenly filling the room. Although it _does_ seem doubtful that even someone of Quinine's intelligence could manage to put together an escape party on such short notice and with his communications so tightly controlled."

"My people did their job as best they could given the circumstances yesterday, Cabernet," half-snapped Rum after Kenji's angry gaze came to rest on him and didn't leave, the trim older man leaning forward so quickly that his short well-groomed silver hair became slightly disheveled and his frameless glasses slid forward on his nose. He continued as he repositioned his glasses, taking a deep breath or two beforehand to calm his tone and temper. "Quinine's trip yesterday was planned with virtually no notice and was _also_ undertaken against the advice of _both_ my senior advisers _and _myself due to the trip's location. There was no way to ensure thorough enough security precautions with a mere three hours' forewarning."

"We know that, Rum. No one is blaming you directly for this little lapse." Vermouth accompanied this statement with an almost dangerous smile. "I take it that the security around Bitters and Tonic has been greatly increased following this incident, however?"

"Of course," he replied politely and evenly with a nod. "If it _was_ a kidnapping, we're not risking either one of them getting taken as well. On the other hand, _if_ Quinine somehow managed to actually arrange this disappearance of his last night we're not going to let the other two get any bright ideas in their heads about escaping." Rum took his glasses off and pulled out a soft cloth to clean them as he sighed lightly. "I really _do_ wish you would have consulted with me about making arrangements before you set up that dummy corporation and decided to so drastically alter the Organization's long-term plan. But what's done is done."

"I talked things over with our leader, who agreed with me and thought it best to proceed with my new plan. They were clearly becoming too dangerous to keep roaming free as meitantei, and it was very doubtful according to our consultants that we'd be able to bring them under our wing in order to influence their parents thanks to the career path that their parents had somewhat chosen for them. Plus, some aspects of the plan had already been radically changed thanks to some…unforeseen circumstances." Vermouth gave Kenji a pointed glance, who merely replied with an emotionless stare. "And as you so wisely say, Rum, what's done is done."

* * *

"Young master, my house guest is now awake. And also rather irate, I might add." Jii had agreed to let Shinichi stay in his house after Kaito had explained as quickly as possible the fact that Kudo Shinichi was his twin and that his brother would likely need a place to hide out for a while. "He's eating a late breakfast in the other room right now but you might want to come over and explain things to him as soon as possible. He seems very ready to bolt out the door at any moment."

_Aww, crud. He just _had_ to wake up while I'm in right the middle of class…_ "We're heading to early lunch soon; I'll try to see if I can catch the bus over there alright Jii-chan? Just try to keep him as happy as possible in the meantime." Kaito hung the phone up under his teacher's disapproving glare. "I'm sorry, that phone call couldn't wait," he offered apologetically as he slid his phone back into his school uniform's pocket.

Just then, his phone rang again, and Kaito recognized the ring as the one he had assigned to Jii. _He's calling me back already? I wonder what's going on. _He stepped out into the hallway and answered with a hissed "I told you I'm in the _middle of class_. I don't want to have to hold buckets in the hallway again. What's going on?"

"Exactly _what_ do you think that you're doing, whoever the hell this is? Do you have _any _idea what you're doing, or the type of people that you're interfering with?"

The tone was clearly meant to be angry, but Kaito immediately picked up on an undercurrent of fear. He then realized that it wasn't Jii but instead his rather feather-ruffled sounding brother on the other end. _He must have grabbed Jii's phone and pressed redial once Jii-chan hung up with me because he overheard our conversation. _"I'm trying to _help_ you, that's what I'm doing. Look, I'm going to come over in a while and explain everything-"

"There's nothing _to_ explain to me," Shinichi retorted in an icy tone that surprised Kaito. Shouldn't he have been grateful for the escape? "And your idea of 'help' is absolutely lousy by the way, if that really _is_ what you were trying to do. I'm leaving to go back before they go after my family and friends. Tell the guy in the other room to give me my phone back and to let me leave without any interference and I won't give them any descriptions of this house or the van that brought me here."

_Whoa, whoa, whoa. What in the world? I have to talk him out of leaving before I can even get there! _"Look, we don't know each other but we actually should. If you'll at least give me a chance to explain a few things face to face before you take off I think it would be in both of our best interests." All Kaito could hope for was Kudo Shinichi's well-honed curiosity to override everything else long enough to be able to talk to his recently discovered twin in person.

"Fine," came the somewhat puzzled but firm response after a few moments of tense silence. "What time can you be here?"

"I was planning on heading over there as soon as school lets out for lunch in a half hour. It should take me about fifteen minutes to get there once I leave."

"I guess I can do that much." Without missing a beat, Shinichi then asked "School? Exactly how old are you?"

"See you then. Sorry, you're breaking up really badly." Kaito crinkled a paper by his speaker to lend the fib credibility before hanging up the phone. He had at least managed to finagle a conversation with his brother; now the trick was definitely going to be making it count.


	19. Chapter 19

"You did WHAT, Kuroba-kun?"

After studying the stunned, vaguely shocked look on Miyano Shiho's face for a few moments Agasa found himself wondering about two things: what sort of news that she was receiving from Kuroba Kaito and whether it had been wise to allow her to pick up the phone downstairs instead of simply letting it ring. She had asked the older man to call her in as being sick to Teitan Elementary that day so she could do some research work down in the lab, and he never argued with Shiho on the very rare days that she made the request.

"He's insisting on coming here to meet with you?" the scientist continued after a couple minutes of intent listening as she shut her eyes and rubbed her temples lightly with her free hand, her face a mixture of disbelief and planning. "I'll need to ask Agasa-hakase, of course, but I can't imagine that it will be a problem." Shiho covered the mouthpiece with her hand and turned to the professor. "Apparently Kuroba-kun somehow managed to locate Kudo-kun and has taken him to an old family friend's house, but Kudo-kun won't meet with him face to face unless it's here at your home."

"He found Shinichi? How in the world-Yes, of course they can meet here, but how did he manage to-"

"He's not really saying. And he also seems to be _deliberately_ unspecific about that particular subject, might I add." Shiho shrugged and uncovered the mouthpiece to reply to their caller. "Agasa-hakase says it isn't a problem. Does Kudo-kun need to be picked up from your friend's, or does he have a way to-"

Shiho was interrupted by a loud, insistent knocking that began on the front door. Agasa went over to answer it to find a very tense Kudo Shinichi on the other side, head tucked inside a well-worn baseball cap and body hidden under a large, baggy brown coat and faded blue jeans that looked at least one size too large for his frame. _So he truly _has_ permanently reversed the poison's effects it seems. _Agasa then quickly stepped aside and let Shinichi in, who walked over to the couch before sinking down into it and removing his hat after checking the room's windows to make sure they all had blinds covering them.

"Who the hell does that Kuroba guy think he is?" Shinichi muttered before turning to Agasa after taking in the older man's still shocked expression. "I didn't figure you'd say no to having us meet here, so I started heading this way on the bus early. And yes, I have my body back but it's a really, _really_ long story that I'd really rather not get into right now."

"Kuroba-kun is on the way, his lunch period just now started," began Shiho as she approached the pair. "Where have you been? Although the facts that you have your original body back and that you've come here in a disguise, albeit a hastily thrown together one, seem to answer my question quite thoroughly when taken together." She narrowed her eyes as she continued to study Shinichi closely, nodding slightly as her instincts seemed ton confirm her hypothesis. _It's faint, but _their_ aura is definitely surrounding him…did he decide to do undercover work or something? But surely he would have informed at least Agasa and myself if he was planning to do something like that, and that _also_ wouldn't explain how he got his teenaged body back permanently, either._

"I only want to have to explain it once, so I'm going to wait until I can get a hold of Mom and Dad too. But for now let's just that I got stupid and walked right into one of the Black Organization's traps, along with Hattori and Hakuba Saguru. And none of us figured it out until what was going on until it was way too late." He suddenly sat up and looked at both of the others. "You two know who this guy is and why he did this, don't you? Why'd he-"

"I really think it would be best to let Kuroba-kun tell that to you himself once he gets here," replied Shiho calmly. "I think you'll find his reasons very understandable once he explains them." _Although I'm certain you'll probably be able to hazard a guess fairly quickly simply based on how much that you two look alike. _Shiho still recalled how she'd initially mistaken Kuroba Kaito for Kudo Shinichi and the lucky twist of fate that had caused them to meet up in the library while both researching into the violently deceased Amano Achika.

"I didn't _want_ to leave! Well, at least not until I'd figured out a way to get Hattori and Hakuba out of there with me as well."

"Whoa, whoa now. What exactly are you even talking about, Shinichi?" Agasa had taken a seat on the couch located across the coffee table and had pulled out a notebook to take notes. _Is that what really happened? Did the Black Organization finally decide that they couldn't let the boys continue with their lives outside of the Organization? If that's the case I'm actually quite surprised that they didn't act far, far sooner than nine and a half months ago…_

"I told you. The Black Organization set a trap and all three of us walked right into it." He leaned back and looked up at the ceiling with a tired expression. "I've been trying to figure out a way to escape for months, but I wanted to make sure that the other two could escape with me and there was never a wide enough window to try- the Organization made sure of that, of course." He shook his head wearily as he continued to look upwards. "And after this they'll probably have the both of them locked up so tight that it won't do any good to come up with anything even if I _do_ go back to the Organization…"

"You mean those giant creeps dressed in black that I rescued you from last night?" came Kaito's voice from the doorway before he finished entering and locked the door behind him. "You actually _want _to go back to them?"

"I didn't want to leave until I was ready to!" snapped Shinichi as he rose up and walked over to the other boy in a huff. "You have no idea what you've probably just…" his sentence drifted off and his tone changed as Shinichi seemed to be fully taking in their remarkable physical resemblance.

"Do I have something on my face?" Kaito inquired after a few moments of tense silence before realizing that the very observant Shinichi had immediately picked up on their similar appearance, as Kaito had been expecting. Kaito then decided to emphasize the point by quickly smoothing his hair into a rough approximation of his twin's hairdo, a roguish grin slowly spreading its way across the magician's face as he realized that it had had the intended effect even without the amount of gel at hand that he would have needed to fully emulate Kudo Shinichi's hairstyle.

Shinichi turned to Shiho and Agasa and seemed like he was going to ask a question, but merely turned around and sat back down on the couch before returning his attention to Kaito with a look that mixed determination and puzzlement. "I assume that we're related somehow." Of course, Shinichi already had a damn good idea of exactly _how _close- when the other boy had changed his hairstyle it had been like looking into a mirror before he brushed his hair out in the morning. He _had _also been adopted by the Kudos, so he knew that logically he could very well have relatives and family that he didn't know existed. Shinichi wanted hard proof and tangible evidence of a blood relationship, though, not just a startlingly accurate lookalike standing in front of him. If there was one thing that spending nine and half months as the Black Organization's unwilling servant had done to Shinichi, it was making the meitantei exceedingly wary and even more cautious than he had been while trying to hide from them.

Kaito nodded once before wordlessly handing Shinichi a slightly aged pair of official-looking papers- his own birth certificate and Shinichi's, which Yusaku and Yukiko had told Agasa how to locate in their mansion after the older man had endured some rather probing questions from the pair. Kaito was originally going to have shown the other boy some copies but had decided that Shinichi probably wouldn't accept anything other than the actual certificates, not that he blamed him. After Shinichi studied the papers intently for a while, taking in the full meaning of the names and birthdates that verified what his gut had been telling him from the moment he'd laid eyes on the other boy, Shinichi looked back up at his newfound sibling.

"Do you know about...what was done to us when we were infants?" _Of course, I'm making the assumption that he was injected with the APTX-48 like the other three of us were. _

"Sort of. Apparently our birth mother wasn't too specific with Agasa-hakase here when she talked to him about it," replied Kaito before sitting down across from his brother. He hadn't failed to notice that both Agasa and the strangely mature little girl who was staying with him, Haibara Ai, had quietly slipped into the kitchen and shut the divider behind them so that the pair could talk by themselves. Kaito had his own suspicions that the 'little girl' was another person who'd ingested whatever had shrunk Kudo Shinichi and forced his twin to take on the alias of Edogawa Conan, but he'd been too focused on finding his brother to ask her. "She mentioned something about experimental intelligence or something like that one of the last times that he ever talked to her."

"That's pretty much it," replied Shinichi as he leaned forward. "There was a group of us that was injected with an experimental anti-aging drug after they found out by testing it on rats that it worked as an intelligence enhancer instead."

"A group? Just how many got injected with the stuff, or do you know?"

"Well, the two other guys that got suckered in with me right off the bat- Hakuba Saguru and Hattori Heiji. I couldn't ever find anything that was definitive on whether there were more."

_Hakuba got injected with the stuff, too? And Hattori Heiji...isn't he that metantei I've had to sneak around a time or two down in the Osaka area? _"Well, do you know where they are now? Assuming that _they_ don't want to be working for them like _you_ don't want to be working for them that is."

"I don't know. And that's going to be the hard part-trying to contact them and get them out of there. The group that forced us to work for them- the Black Organization- is very, _very_ dangerous and after what you did last night it'll probably be next to impossible to get either of them out of there."

Kaito's face began to showcase a grin- a grin Shinichi felt oddly like he had seem someplace before (well, make that several times before) but couldn't quite place- in fact, he felt as if he had seen the exact same grin before, but on someone _else's_ face. It sounded strange even to him, but it was a feeling that he couldn't shake. "Oh, I wouldn't worry too much about that," his twin began with a confident tone. "If we can find out where they're at, I'm pretty good at that sort of thing."


	20. Chapter 20

* * *

"So, Cabernet, whenever _are_ you going to get around to telling your son that he's not an only child?" Vermouth eyed Amano Kenji with some amusement as they walked side by side a few feet apart from each other. "He's no fool. I'm sure he'll discover the truth eventually and that may lead to some resentment, especially once he discovers that his brother has been literally a few feet away from him several times and that you knew that." Vermouth had tried to subtly arrange a meeting between Shinichi and an undisguised Aishu several times with no success before Shinichi's 'kidnapping,' mostly due to a combination of how heavily guarded Shinichi had always been and the fact that Aishu was almost phobic about appearing in public without a disguise thanks to the insistence of his father and grandfather.

"Grenadine _is _an only child as far as both he _and_ I are concerned." This was said in a no-nonsense tone as the pair continued to walk down a long hallway towards a frequently used meeting room. "And it would be most unfortunate for whoever pointed it out to him if he were to ever discover otherwise, I might add." Kenji followed this statement with a pointed, sideways half glare at Vermouth as the pair finished their approach to a meeting hall that was going to be filled in ten minutes.

Vermouth nodded politely in understanding before she let Cabernet pass in front of her. After he couldn't see her anymore, a devilish smile very briefly danced across her lips before she finished entering the heavily guarded room they'd been heading towards and began the usual niceties of pre-meeting introductions. If her hunch was correct- and Vermouth knew that it was- two of his three sons had already met, albeit under most unusual circumstances. Her second silver bullet seemed to have chosen a most interesting trajectory indeed once he'd been loosed from the barrel, although due to Kuroba Kaito's nighttime occupation that really hadn't been an entirely unexpected development.

And if Aishu _just_ so happened to find the photograph Vermouth had taken of Achika and her newborn triplets- which Vermouth had carefully left lying in a spot where Aishu could quite possibly find it while he was looking for something else in his room- well, that certainly wouldn't be _her_ fault now would it?

"Before we start this meeting, has there been any progress on discovering Quinine's whereabouts?" demanded Kenji almost immediately after the group had finished sitting down. "It's been almost twelve hours now."

"No, sir." Rum's face filled with fury, though his tone was calm and neutral. "We've checked on the Kudos, and they're still traveling around Europe normally and have had no contact from him aside from his last monthly allotted call that was placed two weeks ago." He gave Vermouth a disapproving glare before continuing- he'd never liked the idea of the calls from non-secure phones. "We also thought that he might try to contact Mouri Ran, but he hasn't called her or been spotted anywhere near Mouri Kogoro's detective agency. The bugs we've planted haven't picked up anything untoward, either, just people going to Mouri with cases."

"Of _course_ he's not going to contact his parents or his girlfriend. He'd know they'd be the first place we'd start looking," snapped Kenji impatiently. "Widen the net then. Friends of the family, acquaintances of theirs no matter how old or recent, you get the idea. I want him found."

"What do you think we've _been_ doing since he vanished, Cabernet? We're looking for him everywhere. Several of my staff are pulling extended shifts just for this search effort." Rum snorted and adjusted his glasses, quickly calming himself down with a few deep breaths. "I'd also very much like to reiterate that the sudden trip to Japan he took was _not _advised- for this _exact_ reason. Japan is familiar to him and he likely has a wide variety of places to hide. He's _also_ certainly not stupid enough to walk around in public without a disguise."

"What about the tracking device in his phone? Didn't your people plant them in their phones for this _exact_ situation?"

"His cell phone was found at the very bottom of a trash bin close to the building that he was inspecting when he vanished. The one in his shoe was found about twenty yards further away and still in the shoe."

"The three of them weren't supposed to know about the one in the shoe," replied Vermouth in a playful tone. "How do you suppose Quinine or the kidnapper knew about it?"

"Probably the same way they found the one in the phone. A bug sweeper of some kind, I'd imagine," huffed Rum. "That's beside the point at the moment, however. We have other business to attend to. If any progress is made in the search, you'll be informed immediately."

* * *

"So how did you find out that we were related?"

Shinichi finally broke the somewhat tense silence that had ensued ever since he'd given Kaito a long, but rough outline of the last nine months and what exactly had happened. The question had been bugging him ever since Kaito had handed him their birth certificates- Shinichi couldn't imagine his adoptive parents being very forthcoming about it on their own. It was more than a little strange having family handed to him out of nowhere, but he supposed that he'd just have to make the best of it for the time being- especially since Kaito seemed willing to help him rescue Saguru and Heiji. _And how weird that Kuroba and Hakuba are even- well, _were_ even- in the same class at the same high school..._

Kaito figured it was a fair enough question; he'd have asked the exact same thing if his twin brother suddenly appeared out of the blue. He decided to answer the question with one of his own. "Were you in Germany at any point over the last, oh, six or seven months?"

Shinichi blinked before nodding his head with a somewhat puzzled look. "Yeah. But what does that-"

"Everything, actually. I had a lady come up to me that mistook me for you; she thanked me for helping her with translation over in Germany. Of course, I've never _been_ to Germany so it got me wondering, especially when she said that he could have been my twin. I started poking around and found our biological mom, and then Haibara saw the name I was looking at and ran some tests and confirmed that we're twins." He grinned. "Looks like that lady hit the nail right on the head, huh?"

"Vermouth," replied Shinichi darkly before standing up and looking around. "Hey Agasa-hakase, where'd you move the computer to? I have to get in contact with the Organization to try and throw them off the trail as long as possible."

"Vermouth? What do you want with that?" Kaito then glanced down at his watch and realized that his lunch period had ended ten minutes ago- he'd been so caught up in his brother's story that he hadn't realized how much time had passed. "I have to get back to school- I'm late already. Just don't take off before I get back, alright?"

As Shinichi watched his twin fly out the door and race down the street in hopes of catching the still-idling bus, his mind was still fully focused on the revelation that _Vermouth_ had approached Kaito and set him down the path of finding his blood relatives. He wasn't positive that it was her, of course, but it had her knowing smile written all over it. He'd also done a bunch of translation for her in Germany a few months back, so it only increased his certainty. _Why did Vermouth deliberately seek Kuroba out? If what he's saying is the truth- and I guess I have no reason to doubt it- she must have known that we were related all along. So what's her game exactly?_

"Did you still need the computer, Shinichi? I moved it downstairs a few months ago." Agasa's voice pulled Shinichi out of his thoughts.

"Yeah. I've gotta get in touch with them and say _something _before they start going after everyone that I know. Of course, I've also have to come up with a believable story first."

"Maybe you should just tell them the truth," offered Shiho with a vague half-amused smile as she began heading downstairs with Shinichi. "You _were_ technically kidnapped after all, weren't you Kudo-kun?"

"Very funny." Shinichi offered the shrunken scientist an annoyed look before heading downstairs while he frantically tried to think of a way to word the Email that he'd be sending to be as vague as possible. _I should probably have Agasa drive me to someplace far away from here to send it, too, unless he feels like helping me set up some proxies to hide behind. _He wasn't willing to risk a phone call with the phone that he knew was bugged and also implanted with a tracking device to boot. _Actually, come to think of it, where _is _that phone? Did Kuroba get rid of it? _Of course, the lack of black jackets in the area told Shinichi that his twin had most likely tossed the phone somewhere far away. _And my shoes, too- that's why I couldn't find them when I woke up to get rid of them, I'll bet. But I'm really wondering just _how _Kuroba knew about those tracking devices... _

* * *

"So why in the world were you so late coming back from lunch? Sensei nearly blew a vein when you came running in," laughed Aoko as she poked Kaito in the ribs as the pair walked to their buses. "You've also been even more distracted than normal this whole afternoon."

"It's, uhh, complicated," replied Kaito evasively as he sped up slightly. "But I have to get home in a hurry, alright? So don't bug me." He had the feeling that it would be best for everyone- including his brother- if he talked about Kudo Shinichi to as few people as possible. It has been obvious that the guys in black wanted a tight leash kept on him, but the bugs in his phone and shoe had almost been overlooked in the heat of the moment last night. Who knows what might have happened if Jii hadn't thought to pull out his bug sweeper 'just in case' after they'd started driving away? To Kaito's chagrin, Aoko increased her speed to match his.

"What are you trying to hide? If you were the one that replaced sensei's dry-erase markers with permanent ones yesterday she pretty much knows that it was you, Kaito."

"Of course that was me. That's not what-" He looked down at his pocket as his phone rang and saw that Jii was calling him. "I have to take this call, see you later Aoko!" he called out as he leapt onto his bus and took the very back seat, as far away from the other students getting on as possible. "What is it?"

"My houseguest has shown up again. He didn't want you bothering to go where the two of you met earlier. He's apparently decided that it's safest to stay here."

"Alright, I'll head over there then. Thanks, Jii-chan." Kaito returned his phone to his pocket and then looked up to see Akako making herself comfortable in the seat in front of him. _What's she doing on this bus? We don't take the same route home... _"Hey Koizumi, what are you doing on this bus?"

The witch turned around and studied him with a neutral expression. "I'm going to help you find the others." She then turned back around and opened up a paperback novel, indicating that the conversation was over.

Kaito had just been about to ask her what she meant when he remembered that she could read minds and settled back in for the ride instead. _It's just good that she's not working for those guys who're all dressed in black...of course, I better call Jii-chan and let him know she's coming with me._


	21. Chapter 21

Thanks to all my watchers, favers and reviewers!

* * *

"She can do..._what_?"

Kaito laughed inwardly; he should have known that his very fact and evidence-based brother would have difficulty accepting what Koizumi Akako was capable of, at least without seeing it with his own two eyes first. "Read minds, actually," Kaito replied evenly as he handed Shinichi a large brown paper bag full of clothing that he'd scrounged up from his closet. "Along with some other, even weirder stuff." He decided not to specify any further unless Shinichi asked. _Besides, Kudo will probably wind up seeing some of her witchcraft for himself by the time we're done finding and rescuing Hakuba and Hattori. _Not even Hakuba Saguru deserved to be stuck working for a bunch of evil jerks for the rest of his life. "Hey, like I told you, she followed me home on the bus all on her own- I didn't invite her. But I figured that if she wants to help..." Kaito let the sentence drift off.

Shinichi opened the offered bag and eyed its contents suspiciously before turning the same distrusting gaze upwards to his twin. "Am I going to find exploding ink pens or anything like that in any of the pockets, Kuroba?" He'd already learned to be on the lookout for tricks and prank materials thanks to an earlier incident with a rubber chicken and Konsuke Jii's refrigerator when he'd gone to get a soda after Jii had left for a while at Kaito's request.

"Nope. It's clothes I don't wear much so there shouldn't be anything in the pockets." He grinned. "That doesn't mean you shouldn't check them, though." After Shinichi gave him an unamused glare and headed to the restroom to change out of the oversized outfit that he'd borrowed, Kaito focused his attention on Akako. She seemed to be in the midst of pulling out what looked like a letter, feather and crystal ball out of her backpack. "So, uh, how exactly are we going to-"

Akako sighed and turned to Kaito. "If you'll be quiet and actually let me focus, I should be able to track down Saguru-kun's current physical location. Well, give or take about two miles." She pulled a large, old-looking leatherbound book out of her bag and opened it to a bookmarked page after she finished setting up the crystal ball. "Unfortunately, I don't have a tangible object that's strongly associated with the other boy- it helps the location spell's accuracy a great deal." She sighed and sat back down on Jii's couch as she finalized her preparations. "So when exactly are you going to tell your brother about your little...nighttime occupation?"

_And just why is that any of your business, Koizumi? _"Dunno yet exactly, but I have a feeling that watching you work is going put his mind through the wringer enough for today." There was no way to avoid it being, at _best_, a highly awkward conversation and Kaito really wasn't looking forward to having it.

"Alright. I need complete silence until the blue lights that will appear start moving around in a circle and entering the crystal ball- this spell tends to be uncooperative with objects that weren't touched recently." Akako shut her eyes and uttered a few words under her breath while waving her hand over Watson's shed feather and the letter. After a few moments what looked like thin wisps of glowing red smoke started to flit and coalesce around the edges of the feather and letter, the wisps seeming to grow larger and larger with every passing second then fading out again before Akako forced them back into submission by clenching her hand.

By the time Shinichi reentered the room, brilliant red orbs were swirling all around Akako's crystal ball while she carefully guided the orbs into the crystal. The glass then began to fill with a dull smoky red light that steadily increased in intensity as more orbs were added to the mix. "What's she doing?" he hissed quietly to Kaito after watching the lights for a few moments.

"Finding Hakuba by using magic," whispered Kaito in reply before Shinichi gave him a look of utter disbelief. "Now stay quiet till she's done unless you wanna get turned into a frog or something." _Or have her try to force you to eat a chocolate heart so that she can enslave you, _Kaito added mentally with a shiver. _Although she seems to have changed at least _somewhat_ for the better since back then..._

"He's somewhere near Toulouse, France. He's moving east rapidly at the moment, though- so quickly that I'd say he's on an airplane." Akako's eyes never left the crystal ball that she was studying as she finally broke the silence that had settled over the room.

* * *

"Why is Cabernet so insistent on finding Quinine?" Aishu had noticed that his father seemed unusually insistent on locating the missing Brain Trust member, even going so far as to actually go out in the field and take reports from the tracking teams personally- something Aishu had never seen him do before.

Vermouth offered him one of her strange half-smiles from across the car. "Well, I imagine that there are a few reasons for it. However, it's Cabernet's business." She wasn't going to elaborate any further in the bug-filled car, and she knew that Aishu wouldn't expect her to. "Are you going to be staying in your room tonight?"

"Yes," he replied mildly with a single nod. He guessed that there'd be new clothing or something along those lines waiting for him in his room, which was her usual reason for asking that question. Overall, Aishu supposed he was lucky that Vermouth had taken care of him since his mother had suddenly left his father and all those years ago, although he still had more than a few questions in the back of his mind about the events that he didn't feel comfortable asking either Vermouth or his father about, mostly because you never knew whose ears might manage to overhear the queries.

He'd managed to piece together most of the story, but he still wondered why his mother had left his father suddenly after finding out what had been done. Had his father not told his mother about what had been done? Where exactly had she gone to? All he'd ever been told was that he was returned to his father unexpectedly as an infant following a change of heart on the part of his biological mother. But there had always been a part of Aishu that suspected that he wasn't getting the whole truth, especially being raised in and around an organization where lying and deceit were second nature and the normal order of business.

_There are four others that had the same thing done to them, you know._

Aishu had managed to get his hands on the names of two of the others involved in the APTX-48 experiment a few months ago thanks to some highly discreet poking around in old surveillance records. He hadn't been surprised to find that the fathers of Hattori Heiji and Hakuba Saguru were both rather high up in the Japanese police department due to a combination of their hard, diligent work and a little threatening from the Organization to help their careers along- they needed the fathers high up enough on the chain that it would actually matter once the Organization started having their sons manipulate them, after all. But that still left the question of who the two others were...and why Vermouth had decided to so drastically alter the Organization's plans for the boys.

"You look like you have something that's on your mind, Grenadine."

"Well, I was wondering where exactly we're going right now." He looked out of the tinted window after removing the fake glasses that he was wearing, carefully cleaning the fake lenses before putting them back on, berating himself for being so obvious about his puzzlement. _And why you asked me to come along, too. _This wasn't the kind of business that Vermouth normally had him sit in on.

"We're heading to a strategy meeting with Bitters, actually." Vermouth settled back into her seat and took a sip of water before offering Aishu an amused glance. "I know that you've never actually gotten to talk to any of the Brain Trust and I thought you might be interested."

Twenty minutes later, the pair walked into a heavily secured hotel that was held by one of their shell corporations and took the plush elevator up to the top floor. The guards nodded in recognition to Vermouth before she walked up to the meeting room on the floor and knocked twice on the door. Footsteps could be heard on the other side of the door before it swung open and a black-cloaked figure rather stiffly ushered the two in.

"Hello there, Bitters. It's been a while, hasn't it?" began Vermouth smoothly as she settled into one of the room's chairs. "A good four or five months, at least."

"We're not here to make small talk," came a synthesized male voice from under the hood in reply. "You're the one that dragged me out here, in case you forgot. What do you want?" He sat down in a very defensive, arms-crossed position in a chair that was as far as possible from Vermouth and Aishu.

"Well, _He _felt that you were probably one of the best people to consult about Quinine's whereabouts and what he might do. You knew him fairly well, after all, correct?"

"You're kidding me, right?" After the question was met with silence, Bitters shifted in his chair a bit. "The three of us haven't been able to talk to each other in months thanks to you guys. How should _I_ know what he's doing or where he's at right now?"

"I see." Vermouth turned to Aishu. "What do you think, Grenadine- is he telling the truth?"

Aishu gave her a somewhat puzzled look, the latex rubbing slightly on his forehead as he cocked his eyebrow. _Where exactly is she going with this? _Vermouth had a habit of being totally unreadable when she wanted to be, which was often. He cleared his throat and activated a voice changer that was built into the collar of his shirt in the process. "It's difficult to tell when I can't see his face."

"Hmm. Very true," replied Vermouth with a nod as she got up and began to exit the room, cell phone in hand. "I'll call and see if we can't get you approval to see his face."

"You realize that was her goal all along, right?" Bitters leaned forward while the sound of the door shutting filled the room, and even though Aishu couldn't see his face he could feel the other boy studying him intently. The only thing that Aishu didn't know for sure was which one of them was Hattori Heiji and which was Hakuba Saguru. The currently vanished Quinine, however, was still a total mystery to him. "Why's she want you to see my face so bad, huh?" Bitters persisted.

"I have no idea." Aishu was caught so off guard by the question that he found himself grateful that his voice changer activated automatically once he initially raised his hand and cleared his throat to turn it on.

"Hmph. I don't buy that, but whatever." The other boy leaned back again, his hood moving slightly in the process. "She doesn't ever do _anything_ without a reason." He seemed to want to say more, but merely adjusted his hood instead.

_You certainly don't have to tell _me_ that, _thought Aishu before his mind turned to coming up with a reply. _But it does seem like she wanted to bring us together for some reason. _His eyes narrowed as Aishu turned his gaze to the door. _What exactly is Mother up to?_

"Who are you, anyway? And what do you_ really_ look like?" Aishu looked back from the door to Bitters in surprise; there was definitely a superior air emitting from the end of the table. The other boy leaned forward confidently and that same confidence entered his voice even through the synthesizer. "I overhear things, y'know- things like Vermouth having a buddy who almost never looks the same."

Aishu wasn't quite sure how to respond. Would he get in trouble if his identity was revealed? Would Vermouth? It was as he was mulling various replies over that Aishu realized his left brown-colored contact was rapidly drying out and would probably fall out if he didn't get some eye drops on it very soon. "Excuse me for a minute," he managed before standing up and realizing that the contact was already on its way down to the ground. He tried to hide his blue eye, but realized that Bitters had already seen the contact fluttering down to the ground. Aishu braced himself for a confrontation before the sudden click of doorknob broke the tension.

"Oh, it's quite alright Grenadine," began Vermouth warmly as she finished entering the room and quickly sized up what had happened after seeing the lens on the floor by him. "I think it's high time that you two met- _really _met."


	22. Chapter 22

Thanks everyone- hope you enjoy!

* * *

"_Kudo?!?_"

The single, disbelieving word was yelled after Aishu finished removing his contacts, wig and pulloff latex mask, the other boy across the table somehow mixing amazement, anger and puzzlement all at once in his tone. Aishu didn't know who this 'Kudo' was (at least he assumed that it was a name,) but judging from the other boy's reaction to his undisguised face Bitters must have known him quite well. Of course, if the initial request to remove his disguise had come from anyone other than Vermouth or his father Aishu would have probably refused to comply (in fact, he probably would have denied wearing a disguise at all.) He still wasn't sure what exactly Vermouth had in mind or why she'd had the two of them meet like this- and most especially why she'd had him show Bitters his true face- but Aishu was sure that she had her reasons, as she always did.

"What in the _hell_-" the other boy suddenly interrupted himself in midsentence; his body language then changed almost instantly from hostility to curiosity as he leaned forward and rested his elbows on the table, his head cocked to the side slightly as he studied Aishu. Aishu was just beginning to grow uncomfortable with the inspection when Bitters nodded to himself in satisfaction before suddenly relaxing, leaning back in his chair casually and crossing his arms in a single, smooth motion. "You aren't Kudo, but you sure look a hell of a lot like him. So who _are_ you, exactly?"

"You can remove your hood and quit using your voice changer, Bitters." Vermouth offered the other boy one of her cloaked half-smiles. "And you can stop trying to hide your Osaka-ben as well." When Bitters turned to her and stayed silent, Vermouth gestured loosely to indicate the room. "There are none of the usual security measures or video recorders in place here; it's been left that way intentionally."

_Osaka-ben? This is Hattori Heiji, then. _Aishu watched as Bitters' right hand slowly, warily inched its way towards his hood, the other boy giving the room one more once-over before reluctantly pushing his hood off of his head. Suspicion-filled deep green eyes flicked back and forth between Aishu and Vermouth as Heiji readjusted his bangs slightly. "You drag me all the way out here for an emergency meetin' and then spring Kudo's twin on me out of nowhere. So just what's goin' on here?" Without the voice changer and Heiji's constant vigilance about hiding his speech patterns, his Osakan dialect shone through in full force.

"I already told you, didn't I? Your friend has gone missing, whether it was through being kidnapped or making arrangements to vanish." Vermouth walked away from the table and hovered near the door. "We felt that you might have the best idea as to where he might be hiding."

"And_ I_ already told ya that I don't have any idea. Hell, we haven't gotten to talk to or see each other in months without the Organization's armed goons surrounding us and everything being recorded fifteen different ways. D'you really think we'd be so dumb as to hatch escape plans when we're being watched like hawks?"

Vermouth's phone rang, and after she took the phone from her purse and looked at the caller ID she grimaced for a moment before opening the door. "If you two will excuse me, I need to take this." _Although this call has come at a most opportune time, _she reflected as she suppressed a smile while the door finished shutting behind her.

"Who are you?" Heiji asked the question the instant that the door clicked back into place. "Ya never answered earlier. And is that another mask, or your actual face?"

"Grenadine" Aishu replied curtly, deciding to not give Heiji his actual name as he had no real reason to. "And yes, this is my real face."

The other boy shook his head in apparent disbelief. "Ya could be Kudo's body double. Same eye and hair color, same height, same build, even right around the same weight I'd bet. Only difference is the hairstyle, really."

Aishu's eyes narrowed. "Who is this Kudo, exactly?" Heiji didn't seem to be lying, and Aishu had a niggling, steadily growing feeling in the back of his mind and in his gut that _this_ was the real reason Vermouth had asked him to come to the meeting with Bitters in the first place.

"Kudo Shinichi." There was a trace of bitterness in Heiji's inflection, and he shifted slightly in his seat. Aishu supposed that it was resentment because the other boy had escaped without him, resulting in the much tighter security that was currently in place. "You've probably only ever heard him called by his code name, Quinine."

_Well, I at least have a name to go on now. But maybe I can try and do better than that... _"Do you have a picture of him, by chance?" He was trying to not fully show how interested he was, but Aishu could tell that the other teen had already picked up on his curiosity.

"What would I be carryin' that guy's picture around with me for?" snorted Heiji. This was followed by a devil-may-care shrug and friendlier tone. "Go look up old crime sections of Tokyo-based newspapers, his mug is all over 'em."

Aishu blinked in surprise; the reply had caught him off guard. "Crime sections?"

"Yeah, sure. He's a detective like I am- well, we _were_ detectives at least. And pretty damn good at it, too." His tone grew quiet, and he looked down at the floor momentarily before reestablishing eye contact. "Thanks to that stuff they shot us up with when we were kids, of course." Heiji cocked an eyebrow. "I'm guessin' you got a shot of it too?"

_So they _were_ told about the APTX-48, although Mother hinted as much. _Aishu had wondered about that for quite a while after he'd begun researching the Brain Trust, along with something else that was bothering him. _Mother also said that there were four others besides me who received the injection. The Brain Trust- Hakuba, Hattori and Kudo- adds up to three...so who's the fourth? And why weren't they brought into the Brain Trust as well when the other three were? _

"You got the look on your face that Kudo gets when he's thinking hard about somethin'," remarked Heiji after a couple seconds of silence had passed. "What's on your mind?"

Aishu's eyes wandered the table a bit as he tried to formulate an answer before he realized that Vermouth had left a photograph laying on the table- not by chance, he was certain. As his mind was still trying to settle on whether or not to trust the Osakan, he reached out and took the picture. He frowned lightly as he found himself inspecting what seemed to be a photo of himself taken without a disguise on._ Is this a picture of me that Mother took? No, it can't be...I don't own a suit that color and I don't just style my hair, I always wear a wig. _Not to mention the fact that Vermouth would never have taken a photograph of his bare face without telling him first.

Heiji got up out of his seat and looked at the picture over Aishu's shoulder after he finished walking behind the other boy. "Oh, that's what you're lookin' at." He jabbed a finger at the picture. "That's him- Kudo Shinichi, the guy we were talkin' about."

_Hattori really wasn't kidding about how much that Kudo and I look alike. _Now Aishu found himself very curious about this other boy and why the two of them bore such a strong resemblance to each other. He'd always assumed that he was an only child, and neither his father or Vermouth had conveyed any differently during his life. Aishu was virtually certain, however, that this meeting with Hattori Heiji and the photograph was his surrogate mother performing one of her many intricate, delicate end-arounds of his grandfather and father's rules. The question now was how to pursue the knowledge that he wanted without getting caught.

* * *

"Uh, Kuroba?"

Kaito wandered over from his pile of books to where Shinichi was staring at a microfilm projection on the wall, wondering just what was going on. "What is it?" The two of them had decided to try and figure out where Saguru was heading based on what Akako had gleaned from her location spell.

Shinichi tried to reattach a large black eyebrow that was working itself loose. "That." He accompanied the reply by pointing his wrinkled, aged-looking finger at the wall of the library with his free hand. Anyone looking at Shinichi would have seen an old, wispy-haired man in a well-worn brown suit, the product of nearly an hour's worth of carefully applied stage makeup. Kaito was just grateful that Shinichi hadn't pressed him on how he knew so much about the art.

Kaito shook his head as he studied the wayward brow his twin was trying to adjust. "I _told_ you to sit still when I was putting those on, didn't I?" He found his mind quickly turning elsewhere, however, when he read what was being shown on the wall- a small newspaer article that was printed the day of their birth.

**BUNDLES OF JOY: LOCAL POLICE OFFICER GIVES BIRTH TO TRIPLETS**

"That's not about us, is it?" asked Kaito, already knowing that his brother wouldn't have bothered bringing the article to his attention unless it was.

"It is. Unless there was more than one Amano Achika that gave birth to multiple children on June 21st eighteen years ago" replied Shinichi, now realizing that he was over a month younger than he'd thought due to his parents always celebrating his birthday on May 4th. Part of him also wondered why his parents hadn't ever told him that he was adopted, but there were other things to worry about at the moment- like the fact that he and Kaito were apparently two of three _triplets_, not twins. "I decided to try and do a little more digging into her killing while we were here at the library and found this."

"I wonder why Agasa-hakase never mentioned us having another brother," muttered Kaito as he quickly skimmed through the article. _And I'd be willing to bet that he probably got experimented on just like we did, too._

"Anything _else_ about the article seem strange to you?" Shinichi asked the question in a tone Kaito could tell meant he'd already spotted something and merely wanted verification.

As Kaito finished glacing through the brief story again, he realized that there was a name that was conspicuously missing- the same name that was lacking on both of their birth certificates. "No mention of her husband's name anywhere, even though it refers to her having a husband a few times."

"Exactly," nodded Shinichi as he snapped the microfilm projector off and removed the article. "This was _also_ the only article I could find at all on her, besides the ones covering her murder that is." He supposed it was at least partially due to his nine months of forced servitude, but Shinichi couldn't help but hear the cawing of crows as he looked at the article again.

"Well, maybe we should start by asking Agasa-hakase more about the day she was killed, eh?" Kaito gathered up the research materials on France that they'd photocopied and stuffed them into his backpack. "We'd better get going, especially if you want to call Mouri before we eat dinner."

"I'm gonna call Agasa-hakase while we're walking." Shinichi was furious that the professor hadn't said anything to the two of them about their triplet status, and that they'd only found out by stumbling across it thanks to luck. "So, when were you going to tell us that we have a third brother?" he asked in a quiet, irate voice as soon as Agasa finished answering the phone.


	23. Chapter 23

Thanks to all my watchers, readers, favers and reviewers! Let me know what you think! I'm looking for some beta readers for some upcoming crossovers, too; check out my profile and drop me and Email or PM if you're interested in betaing. :)

* * *

"Tonic?"

_They actually let him call me? _Saguru was rather surprised to hear the artificially disguised voice of Bitters (or rather, Hattori Heiji) on the other end of his cell phone as soon as he pressed the answer button. Ever since Kudo Shinichi had pulled his still-unexplained vanishing act in Japan two nights ago, he and Heiji had been placed on what amounted to twenty-four hour solitary confinement. The Black Organization had also decided to place a continent or two between the two remaining Brain Trust members as well, Saguru having had to endure a rather haphazard, turbulence-filled ten hour trip on a small plane until early in the morning. He had no clue where he was at exactly, and Saguru knew that was intentional, but he'd glanced at his watch before and after the trip to get a rough time frame of his travel. He'd also begun feeling the familiar effects of jet lag washing over him, and he'd actually just been contemplating a short nap when his phone had rung. Saguru grabbed his synthesizer off of the small bedside table and held it close to his mouth. "This is Tonic, yes."

"Good. How long do you have to talk?"

Now Saguru knew that it really _was_ Heiji. "That depends on what we need to talk about," he replied evenly, finishing out their code and verifying that he was himself as well. He, Heiji and Shinichi had decided that they needed some way of verifying each other back when they'd first started to realize that their 'jobs' weren't with any sort of legitimate business, so a set of questions and answers had been quickly developed during one of their last face to face meetings together. There were thirty different questions along with thirty-five possible answers, and they tried to never use the same combination twice so the Organization wouldn't catch on; they also tried to use the questions and answers in more places than just the start of their conversations as well. Of course, the three of them hadn't had time to come up with some kind of in-person verification system before Vermouth had revealed herself and sucked them fully into the Organization, so they could only make the identifications if it was a phone call.

"I have to ask the obvious question first. Have you heard from Quinine at all?"

_You know I haven't. There's no way in the world Kudo would be stupid enough to call one of the Organization's phones when he's on the run from them, and all of our mail is opened before we get to look at it. _Saguru's found his curiosity piqued, though._ Just where are you going with this, Hattori? _"Right, Bitters. As if Quinine would be stupid enough to contact either of us right now," he half-laughed through his synthesizer in reply.

"That's why I keep trying to tell them too," snorted Heiji, his impatience almost seeping through the forced monotone of his own synthesizer. "Vermouth and that friend of hers, Grenadine, asked me about it again today..."

_OK, so you met with Vermouth and Grenadine today. Why is that so important, or what happened that made it important? _"They haven't questioned me any more about it yet, but I imagine that's because you associated with him much more regularly." Saguru still recalled how shocked he'd been when 'Edogawa Conan' had revealed himself as the long-absent Kudo Shinichi at the first of the Brain Trust's meetings. The improbable story he'd relayed of shrinking after being given some kind of poison had sounded like something out of an over-the-top crime novel to Saguru initially, but the shrunken teenager in a seven year old's body sitting across the table from him had been impossible to dismiss. Later, of course, there'd been the testing of an experimental antidote on the other teen after the Organization had revealed themselves- an antidote that had put Kudo Shinichi into a deep coma for two weeks but reversed the poison's effects permanently.

"Grenadine seemed pretty interested in Quinine." This was followed by a very deliberate cough. "Of course, they all want to catch him so I guess that's no surprise, right?"

Of course it wasn't a surprise to Saguru; Rum, in particular, had been absolutely furious the last couple of times the blonde had seen him. "Not particularly, no." He sighed. "Get to the point, Bitters. I'm quite tired and I'd actually like to take a nap if pos-"

"Just make sure to pay attention to anything weird. That's all."

Saguru looked at his phone in puzzlement after Heiji quickly hung up. There was no question in Saguru's mind that the Osakan had desperately been trying to tell him _something, _but he had no idea what exactly the other boy had been trying to convey. He put the phone back on the table before he heard a soft, muted chiming coming from somewhere in the room that he didn't recognize. He looked around for a few moments and stood up as the noise the stopped and then started again, Saguru quickly realizing that it was a ring tone that was also coming from behind him- on, or perhaps even _in_, the bed somewhere. He turned around and moved the top sheet down; the ringing increased in volume immediately to his left, where the pillows were located. He lifted up the first pillow as the third ring began and saw a small, square object fall into the pillowcase's corner. Saguru reach in and grabbed it - a cell phone, just as he'd expected - and flipped the phone open, pressing what he hoped was the answer button as he turned his synthesizer back on. _I'm sure Hattori arranged for this phone to be here somehow, but it always pays to be cautious. _"Hello?"

"How's Watson?"

Saguru realized that Heiji wasn't using his synthesizer anymore, which told him that this pair of cellphones had been acquired without the Black Organization's knowledge. He turned off his own synthesizer and looked over at the hawk, who was out of her cage and preening herself on the wooden bed's rustic-looking headboard. "She shed a couple feathers last night, but that's about it." After verifying the code, Saguru sat down on the bed and studied his suitcase that was sitting upright and still unpacked across the room. "I assume that we have a helper of some kind on the inside now?" he asked quietly. He'd already done a close visual sweep of the small cabin he was locked in for bugs or cameras, and had found to his mild shock that there weren't any. He wasn't sure if it was due to a simple oversight in security or the fact that his trip had been so hastily arranged, but either way he wasn't being watched or recorded and he was very glad for it now.

"In a manner of speakin'. You know Grenadine, Vermouth's buddy that's always travelin' with her?"

Saguru cocked his eyebrow. "I've seen Grenadine a few times, yes. I've never actually gotten to talk to him, though." At least, Saguru had always _assumed _that Grenadine was male; Grenadine changed appearances and ages so often that it was very hard to know for certain. It was also usually Vermouth that did all the talking any time Saguru had been in the same room with her and Grenadine.

"I met Grenadine today, like I said. But that's not all." There was what sounded to Saguru like paper getting crinkled up on the other end of the line briefly. "I got to see his actual face."

"I see." Saguru had the feeling that they were finally getting to the point of the covert cell phones and this call. "Why did he decide to show himself to you today?"

"Vermouth asked 'em to take his disguise off. That's not the important part, though." This was followed by a few muffled footsteps. "The guy is an absolute dead ringer for Kudo; in fact, they could be twins. And he's also willin' to help us if we help him."

Saguru yawned. "Help him...with _what_, exactly? And how exactly does he plan to help us?"

"Well, Grenadine thinks he and Kudo might be related 'cause the two of them look so much alike - basically that his dad hasn't been tellin' him the truth about him being an only child. Grenadine said if we help him look into that, he'll help get us more things like these phones that we can use freely."

"So detective work, then. I suppose he could do worse than us for that." Saguru shifted position on the wooden-framed bed and pulled out a small notepad that he kept in his pocket. "What's his real name?"

"Eh, he wouldn't give that to me, not that I blame him. He was pretty much raised by Vermouth in the Black Organization from what he told me; I can only imagine what kinda paranoia'd set in hangin' around them all the time."

"True." Saguru sighed lightly as he realized something. "It's going to be more than a bit difficult for us to do any research without so much as a name to go on. Grenadine realizes that, right?"

"Well, I _do_ have the name of the hospital he was born in. It's a start, at least."

"Better than nothing." Saguru looked around for a pen, finally finding one in the top drawer of the bedside table. "What's the hospital's name?"

* * *

"AGASA-HAKASE!"

Agasa nearly jumped out of his skin as he heard Shinichi's yell come all the way downstairs to where he and Shiho were working. Shiho turned to him and offered a sly, knowing half-smile. "It sounds like you're needed upstairs, Agasa-hakase. And judging by Kudo-kun's tone, I'd hurry."

_This is definitely not good._ Judging by Shinichi's crossed arms and irate expression alongside Kaito's impatient tapping of his own foot and similar accusatory expression, the two of them had found out something in the library. Agasa felt his stomach sink as he quickly began to realize what it probably was.

"So," began Shinichi in an irritated, bristly tone, "when exactly were you going to decide to tell us that Amano Achika had _triplets_, not twins?"

"Kudo and I were doing research in the library and he found an article about it," explained Kaito as they both continued to level glares at Agasa.

Agasa sighed as he looked at Shinichi, then Kaito. _Exactly what I was afraid of. But they deserve to know the truth..._"She gave birth to triplets, yes. However, it's not certain that your third brother is even still alive, which is why I didn't want to say anything about it for a little while longer." He took a seat on his couch, feeling like the wind had been knocked out of him all of a sudden. "I figured that you two had enough to deal with right now- especially you, Shinichi- but I'll be glad to tell you anything that you'd like to know."

"How about everything?" asked Kaito as he sat down on the edge of the coffee table facing the scientist.

Agasa nodded. "If you want to go back to the very beginning, an acquaintance of mine sent your mother to me; Achika-san felt that her three boys seemed to be developing their motor coordination at unusually fast rates for thier ages. She'd apparently been to their pediatrician multiple times about it already and he'd assured her that everything was progressing normally, but she still felt like something was wrong." He looked down at the table. "Something _was_ wrong, of course, but we wouldn't know that until later. Anyhow, after doing some basic tests- having you boys play with blocks and some other things- I explained that there did seem to be some merit to her concerns and that I'd be happy to refer her to a pediatric specialist I trusted since that's not really my line of work at all." Agasa rubbed his temples and leaned forward, trying to think of how to best phrase what was going to come.

"Achika-san eventually confronted her husband about her suspicions since he was the one who started having her see that pediatrician in the first place. He evaded her questions, and she got curious enough to start doing some investigating on her own. When her husband actually ordered her to quit asking questions about what had happened a few months later, she left him and took the three of you with her. Of course, by then she'd managed to put a lot of what had happened together on her own." Agasa offered the pair a smile. "She was a very good, capable policewoman."

"You mean she found out about the stuff we were injected with- APTX-48." Shinichi settled into the love seat on the opposite side of the coffee table Kaito was perched on. "So how did she wind up getting killed?"

Agasa shook his head sadly. "I think it was a simple case of her finding out too much, actually. She never got too specific with me, but it was when you boys were about six months old that she began mentioning what she called 'a plot to slowly take over the Japanese police force.' She also tried to go to the other parents and tell them what was done to their children, but by the time the other parents involved had gotten thier own tests done and realized that Achika-san really was telling the truth, she was already dead."

"So what about our third brother? Where does he come into this?" Kaito crossed and uncrossed his arms before deciding to use them to steady himself on the table.

"Achika-san had been in hiding for two months at that point, but a single woman with identical triplets can't really vanish that easily." Agasa found his eyes drawn to the carpet. "Her husband and whoever he was working for finally tracked her down that night. She managed to call the police before she called me, but it was far too late by the time help had arrived. When the police broke down the door, they found black-jacketed men taking you three out of your cribs while Achika-san lay dying in the next room. The police managed to subdue two of the men- the ones carrying the two of you, of course. Your brother, however, was stolen away by a black van that simply seemed to vanish entirely from the area."

"And they decided to split us up so that it wouldn't be obvious who we were." Shinichi got up off the couch and began pacing around the room, questions quickly filling his mind. _A brother raised in the Black Organization? Is he even going to _want _to be rescued? Of course, that's also assuming he's even alive in the first place..._

"Yes. Actually, that was my idea." Agasa fiddled with a stray napkin that was on the other end of the coffee table. "It was your mother's dying request that I try my hardest to protect your identities, and splitting you up seemed like the best course of action. After you two became eligible for adoption, the Kudos and Kurobas each agreed to take one of you." He smiled at Shinichi and Kaito in turn. "I never told them that you two were twins in order to help protect your previous identities, but I think they might have suspected something because of your similar ages and appearance."

"Welp," began Kaito after he turned to look at Shinichi, "looks like we've got one more to help out, eh?"


End file.
